


Black Collar Academy: A New World

by AshadelMG



Series: Black Collar Academy: Rise of a New World [1]
Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Adult Content, Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cock & Ball Torture, Dark, F/F, F/M, Incest, Lactation, M/M, Memory Magic, Mild S&M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Multi, Nightmare Fuel, Rough Oral Sex, Sex Magic, Sex with Sentient Animals, Wet & Messy, Work In Progress, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-30
Updated: 2013-07-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 11:41:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 66,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/823911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshadelMG/pseuds/AshadelMG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fifty years into the current future, Azeroth is a shadow of its former self and Draenor is but a memory. The Burning Legion came, saw, and nearly conquered... and so the Academy was born.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically the result of me being sleep deprived and drunk. I was thinking about one of my characters, and the Harry Potter theme popped into my head. The result is this; a futuristic non-canon that handles the fall of Azeroth and the rise of a new world... with a whole bunch of sex. This is not a story meant for children, or those with a weak stomach in some of the later chapters.

It was a usual thing, for him to sit there at the fireplace and gaze without truly seeing into the warm flames that cast orange and red over the common room. His hand clutched the fragile glass ass if he were afraid it would fall, but he was impassive. Nothing had ever seemed to bring emotion to his face; no emotions that she could ever find, none that would have warmed her as that fire warmed the home. She flinched as his hand tilted, swirling the dregs of his wine in his glass while he pondered things that she had never hoped to dream of. Or at least, she liked to think that much of him. She liked to think that he thought of her, even when nothing showed that would have proven love or loathing.

 

He set his glass down, and she scrambled forward to offer up the decanter that held more of the dark liquid. Her eyes searched him, and found nothing more than the glossy brown eyes seated beneath strong brows. His chiseled features were tanned, lit with sweat from the heat of the fire that now threatened to scald her clothed back with the force of it. The bottle clicked against glass, and she drew it away to stand awkwardly at his side, twisting her hands around the bottle neck that sat so large in her small hands. His silence continued, and she dared to speak, barely heard above the snap of the dry tinder.

 

“I was wondering, Father... the letter that came for me. Might I read it?” She licked her lips, eyes turned down and away as his own came up to regard her with that same passive nothingness.

 

“No.” The single word response cut her deeply, spoken in his rich baritone before he turned those eyes back to the fire and began his idle swirling again. She knew the tone, knew that pursuing would only beget pain that she would only just be able to tolerate. Pain, humiliation... but curiosity was so much worse a curse, and she felt that the knowledge would soothe the shame she would surely feel later.

 

“Please, I only want to read it. I never get any letters meant only for my eyes, and - ...” Her yelp of pain shattered the words on her lips, the bottle dropped and forgotten to spill wine across the lush carpet. She clutched at the long braid of dark gold hair that he twisted about his hand as he hauled her around in front of him, sweeping her off her feet and onto her knees in one swift movement that left her whimpering. “I'm sorry. Forgive me, Father...”

 

He pulled her harder, until her protests were muffled against the rough leather of his leggings, her body sprawled between his legs so that she could only scrabble wildly for purchase on the carpet, attempting to push herself up. “My precious, precious child. You should know by now that I know what is best for you.” His free hand pushed through the bangs that had escaped her neat braid, pushing them back behind one gently pointed ear before resting his fingertips on the back of her neck. “Maeve, my sweetling, do you not trust me?”

 

A thumb moved, the most of a motion needed to push aside the leather that barely contained his erection, and it dropped to smack against the bridge of her nose and brow, bringing forth a wounded whimper from deep in her chest. She struggled against his grip, pushing against the base of the chair to better wiggle away from the hot skin that she was painfully familiar with, and the lance of pain that shot over her scalp as he jerked her roughly upwards until her lips touched along his shaft. “I've never done you any harm...”

 

Around her throat his hand moved and squeezed, tilting her head until he could coax the tip of his cock between her lips. Her resistance fell as his fingers closed her nose, and she sobbed in pain as he forced himself into her mouth. “If I wished you to read it,” he curled his hands in her braids, pulling her down on his shaft while his hips moved upwards, “I would have handed it to you the moment it came through the door. But I do not, and so I threw it into the fire. Don't choke, it's very unbecoming of you.” He thrust, and her coughing became a horrid gag that silenced itself as her lips met his pelvis.

 

He crooned at her as she struggled to fight the urge to vomit, tears coursing down her cheeks while she peered up at him with the bloodshot eyes of one who was losing air. His thumbs brushed at the tears, his impassive face making no other expression as he held her there until her face began to turn from pale peach to pink, then darker. When he released her, she pulled off of him with an awful gagging, thick ropes of saliva coating his cock as she coughed and sputtered apologies that went unheard. She struggled as he dragged her down again, stretching small mouth and tight throat around him until she no longer fought, and he could simply hold her head and rock his hips, staring at the drool that left the corner of her lips and the snot that smeared above her upper lip as she quietly sobbed her pain.

 

“Classy, Herin.”

 

Her eyes shifted away from his stomach and to the door, trying to find the owner of the silken voice. She saw only shadows through her tears, renewed as he grunted and shoved her away and her head hit the corner of the fireplace, forcing stars into the darkness that was beginning to abate as breath found purchase in her lungs.

 

“I'd always painted you for the forceful type, but never the abusive. The years have not been kind to you.” The shadows moved, and firelight danced upon a slender form dressed in simple leathers, no more decorative than those worn by the hunters and path-stalkers that she was familiar with. The cloak, a rich and deep green that matched the dyed leather that Maeve could see, hid what face she might have been able to find, but she knew the voice for that of a woman. “I would say that I find it a shame, but it really is truly only fitting.”

 

There was silence, long and broken by nothing more than the snap of the logs in the fire, and then there was motion and the tangled sound of a scream and grunt. Maeve cowered against the mantle, the strong form of her father pinned to the floor by little more than the elegant boot of the woman.

 

“Child, I would like you to go to your room and change into traveling clothes. Pack a bit of food and some wine, and any precious possessions that you cannot bear to part with.” The woman's eyes turned to her, flashing green in the dark that the firelight could not quite penetrate. “That was a request, little one. Do not make me turn it into an order. I will wait here for you. I have business with your father.”

 

“You can't do this,” croaked Herin, his hands grasping at the woman's foot in an attempt to dislodge her. She remained firm, her eyes following the willowy form of the girl until she was out of view. “She's my daughter, and I've not given her permission to go anywhere. Least of all with you and those... those people.”

 

“Herin.” She shifted her weight, replacing her boot with her hand as she dropped atop him, straddling him with the natural ease of a professional. He groaned as her soft leathers ground against him, making him shudder. “She's of age, both in the eyes of her people as much as the eyes of her family. Her real family. She no more needs your permission to leave as I do to cut off your air.” With a languid sigh she leaned forward, pressing the palm of her gloves hand against his windpipe until his face began to turn blue. When she finally released him, he spent more time gasping for air than attempting to strike her, and she allowed herself a few moments to observe him.

 

“This has been a very long time coming. Your stubborn disobedience has made me late, and I don't like being late.” Her hand moved, delivering a viper quick strike against his cheek that silenced him before he could finish his retort. He licked the blood away from his lip as she leaned back, bracing her hands on his thighs to support herself while she began to slowly rock and grind atop him. “More than that, you've tested the patience of one who is more than you could ever hope to be. Ah -” she lashed out again, a bloody smear appearing on his cheek, and she wagged a finger at him. “No talking. Your voice is pleasant, but I do hate hearing you speak. It's like... you open your mouth, and I'm forced to watch a cow shit.”

 

Her rhythm picked up as she leaned down, lacing her fingers through his hair, her expression one of boredom though his own was contorting into something that might have spoke of pleasure. “It must have been nice to have a little girl so easily bent under your fingers. Doing anything to please you, but it's not enough.” She purred, her hand grasping around his throat again. “You're a little shit who loves to know where you belong. The bottom of my boot, and no place else. With the snap of my fingers, I could have you licking mud from my feet. That,” she growled into his ear, “is where you belong. The bottom. The stool which I sit upon, the cuckold who watches a worthy man breed his mistress.” A fingernail twisted and dug into his lip, and he spasmed beneath her.

 

Without missing a beat, she stood in a single graceful moment, her boot pressed painfully against his balls. He groaned, and she slowly applied more pressure, and his hands lowered to encircle his shaft, face twisted into a grimace of tangled pain and pleasure. “Look at you. A few moments ago you had yourself on top, using your daughter like a little cocksleeve. Now you have a real woman, and all of those long nights come rushing back, don't they?” Her boot moved, clipping the heel over the head of his cock, and she hissed. “Don't they?”

 

“Y-yes!” His hips bucked as he furiously pumped his shaft, squirming himself up against her boot, and she against stepped on the sensitive sack of flesh until he was whimpering and his masturbation was easily heard, echoing through the previously quiet room.

 

“Yes, what?” She eased up, and he panted with desperation. A flicker of movement caught at her hearing, and she cast an easy glance over her shoulder to focus on the girl that stood there, gaping at a sight that was no doubt foreign. Her tattered dress had been changed into a simple long shift, her braids gone to let waves of dark gold fall to her waist over her bust. A cloak had been thrown haphazardly over her figure, one that the older woman deemed to be malnourished, and her feet were bare. In her hands, a simple cloth sack was being twisted with worry, showing that there was very little that was solid held within.

 

She extended a hand, motioning with two fingers for the smaller girl to come forward, and she was caught between pleasure and disgust as the girl all but fell over herself to obey the simple gesture. Her eyes returned to the man writhing beneath her, and she eased the pressure more until the only contact was his frantic humping that sent his sac thumping wildly against the bottom of her boot.

 

“Yes, Mistress!”

 

With a gentle smile aimed briefly at the no doubt uncomfortable girl, she focused back on the man and lifted her boot, bringing it down with a solid crush, grinding the hard leather until the man howled and came, thick globs of cum splattering his chest and face. She recoiled with a sneer of disgust, sliding her boot away as her hand reached to grasp the arm of the other woman.

 

“Memorize this moment, Maeve. Fix this scene in your mind, so that you will never again fall prey to someone who seeks to change their place. Remember the moment you saw the worm for what he is,” she let the picture sink into her mind, the man who had been reduced to little more than a writhing pile of skin, bathed in his own seed as he futilely pumped his shrinking shaft and gasped with the residual pleasure, “and the day that he lost all power over you.”

 

Her hold did not cease as she turned away, guiding the girl out of the common room and to the door, which still hung open from her silent entry. Gesturing Maeve through, she followed into the unpaved road, leaving the door hanging open behind her as she started down the street.

 

Maeve paused, staring after the woman for a moment before she looked back at the door, moving to close it. The woman's words were quick and sharp, forcing her to snap her hand back and scurry after the figure that was quickly becoming little more than a forbidding walking cloak of green. Those who remained on the streets hurried out of their way, whispering behind their hands and staring blatantly as the two passed. Maeve had little choice but to follow, muttering apologies to those she knew as they left the warrens of the city and found purchase on the short pathway that led out of the insignificant town.

 

“You have questions,” the woman paused to allow her to catch up, and the hazy light that filled the square cast new shadows over the cloaked face. “I have some as well, but I will go through what I am able to now.” Her eyes gleamed from beneath the hood, and she raised her hands to push back the cloth, shaking out hair that shone like spun gold beneath the light. As it settled, Maeve could see streaks of silver woven in the strands, but most startling were the long ears that pointed nearly to the sky. “My name is Ashadel, but you may call me Asha.”

 

Gesturing, the newly named woman led them along the path at a comfortable pace. “I've been sent to gather you, and take you to an establishment where you will be trained in your birthright, and more.” Her eyes flicked to Maeve, a smile dancing on her lips. “You've attracted the attention of a very benevolent woman, Maeve.” A hand lashed out, steadying the girl as she stumbled over a loose stone.

 

“I... don't understand.” Maeve paused to rub at her toe, turning wide eyes on the elven woman. “You saw what he was doing. You knew him. You knew me. You did... something to him.”

 

Ashadel chuckled, her head tilted to the side, gently guiding Maeve along. “Nothing except what he craved so very many years ago. He was a pushover then, and he remains one to this day. You simply never saw that side, as he had left our care a long time ago. With your mother, in fact.” Her smile was a fond one as she spoke. “Nyesla was a beautiful woman, and I see a good deal of her in you. It is good to know that she survives in the blood of her child.”

 

“I'm not... I don't remember her. Father says I'm nothing like her. That she was beautiful and talented, and far more than I could ever hope to be. That I was the reason she died, that it was all my fault. If she hadn't had me – eep!” Maeve thrust her bag up in front of her face as the blonde whirled on her, a finger lifted.

 

“Never. Nyesla dreamed of having a child from the first moment she witnessed a birth. Were her skills placed differently, she might have been a wonderful midwife and nanny. There was no greater joy to her than finding out that she was carrying you, and your father wasn't worthy of her, nor of you.” The finger reached and tapped the poor girl firmly on the forehead. “That entire ideal is going to change, if you are going to be of any use.”

 

When the woman turned away and began to walk, Maeve quickened her pace to match it and spoke quietly. “Where are you taking me? What do you mean, 'if I'm going to be of any use'?”

 

“I had forgotten how badly the outer cities suffered when the Legion peeled through. You can barely recognize that this is where Stormwind once stood. Elwynn's barely a memory.” Asha's musings quieted while she tried to think of a delicate way to explain. “I'm taking you to where Nyesla would have you, were she still alive. A place where you can cultivate the latent gifts within you.” She stopped short, and glanced at the girl. “I'm not going to sit here and ask if you've done some things without meaning to. If you've heard voices. All the things the old wizards and mages might have asked their apprentices.

 

You aren't a wizard. You aren't a mage. You're an untrained quarter-human who has potential enough to be noticed by someone who is very aware of power. You can leave me here, and you'd never know even a hair of your abilities. Or, you can come to where you belong, and learn. So this,” she gestured to their surroundings, the ancient archways and dried up canals of the ruined city of Stormwind a bitter reminder of what was once a great civilization, “never happens again. Not here, not anywhere.”

 

They walked in silence for a time, with Ashadel slowly picking a path through scenery that changed from paved roads to deforested woods, and then bare ground. Only when the woman paused did Maeve find her voice again. “You aren't from around here, are you? I mean, you obviously know what this place is – what it was, at least.” She quieted as the woman began to laugh, feeling oddly uncomfortable quite suddenly.

 

“Maeve, I once knew this land better than you could ever hope to know your own body. I knew Stormwind as well as I knew Quel'thalas. But they are both ruined cities now. Everything was ruined, once the Legion came. We thought that this world was lost completely, but it managed to survive. Everything is slowly rebuilding, and perhaps in another ten or twenty years, Stormwind will stand tall. Again.” She shrugged, folding her arms. “Been a few months since I've hopped back over to Azeroth, but I was born here. I'll always be from here.” Once more she shrugged, and then grinned. “Now one for you.”

 

Before Maeve could question her, she raised fingers to her lips and whistled sharply, her lengthy ears twitching. For a moment there was nothing, and then a roar was heard. Maeve jumped, her eyes flashing to the sky, where she could just barely make out a shape speeding through the clouds. It dropped, large and fast, and she backed away more than a few steps as the behemoth landed behind the other woman, sending up dirt and stone in a flurry of wind.

 

“Have you ever ridden a dragon?” Ashadel's hand lifted, ghosting lovingly over the nose of the immense winged lizard whose pelt shimmered with the colors of the deep sea, holding an ethereal quality that the shocked young woman could hardly put words to. “This is Nazaku. My traveling companion for... a considerable amount of time. Come, he won't bite. He likes it if you scratch right there – yes, there. Beneath the wing. See?”

 

Maeve flinched as the dragon lifted its wing and crooned, but her smile appeared moments later when she realized the beast wasn't going to eat her. She explored the hide beneath her fingers, finding it soft and lacking scales. “Nether... he's a netherdrake, isn't he?”

 

“Very good. The majority of them were lost when the Dark Portal was destroyed, but a good number survived. They flourish on Nalorn, or as best as they can outside of the natural environment. It has been hard, but... well, you'll see.” She offered the girl a leg up, and climbed up easily into the saddle behind her.

 

“I'm going to... but that requires the Gate. No one is allowed to use that without reason.”

 

“You're a good enough reason. Hold the pommel, and clench your knees. Once we're in the air, it'll be smooth sailing. Pull up your hood, and don't bother talking. It's colder and louder up there than most people like to believe.” Her arms looped around the slender figure, and with a roar from the drake and a scream from the girl, they took flight.

 

Maeve slept for hours cradled against the larger woman, and she did not wake until noise began to beat at her and the steady ride became tilted and uncertain. Ashadel's arms tightened around her as Nazaku dipped into a landing, tearing another whimper from the girl. A whimper that became a gasp as Nazaku hit a filmy wall, barely perceptible from the air, and suddenly they were coasting above a runway bordered by mechanical gadgets and engineering marvels.

 

“The gnomes help keep the portal working beneath the shield. We couldn't keep it active as long as we do if it wasn't for their machinery.”

 

She nodded, her eyes following the runway to where it met up with a pavilion lit by spotlights. Her gasp was one of fear and wonder, eyes riveted to the swirling portal that they were now on a collision course towards.

 

“They hate when I do this.”

 

She caught the grin on Ashadel's lips moments before Nazaku roared again and tucked his wings, hitting the portal dead on. All at once, everything seemed to cease to exist. The saddle between her legs, the warmth of the woman behind her, even the feel of her clothes on her own skin all became nothing. She felt fear that bloomed into terror, a deep need to scream boiling in her chest, and then it was gone in the next moment, and all that she had lost was present again.

 

Nazaku burst from the portal into a flurry of activity, a roar sounding out as he spread his wings and took to the sky. His roar was answered, and Maeve made a childish sound of joy as more drakes fell into formation around them, dazzling colors displayed across velvet leather hides. They stood out stark against the sky, no clouds marring the expanse of blue that the single sun blazed brilliantly over. Beneath them, flat plains rolled out, the grass alive with herds of beasts that she had only heard of in storybooks.

 

“The Plains of Jade became the new home for the creatures that were nearly extinct when Draenor finally collapsed and we lost the portal. Some of those talbuk used to be mounts, most are now wild. The grass grows wild here, so there are only a few settlements. The clefthoof herd over there is fairly new. We were lucky to find a few lost ones roaming Azeroth during one of our first trips back once the Gate was reopened. As many as we could get through, we did.

 

But not all things survived. We had a hard time getting the elekk to stabilize here, and the last few that remain are protected in hopes that they'll pull through.” Ashadel spoke as they flew, the accompanying dragons engaging in aerial acrobatics around them that left Maeve breathless. “To the west is the Ivory Coast, and the Silent Channel. You'll visit there once you're established. To the east is the Saresti Desert. You won't venture there for some time, mostly because we have had very little time to explore it ourselves. The dragons have taken to it with wild abandon, and a few of them tell us that there is more to find there than we could ever dream.”

 

The landscape changed beneath them, flat plains becoming rolling hills and then rocky terrain. Cliffs of dark stone replaced the grass, and the wind became more frigid. Trees appeared, dark and forbidding, and even the dragons ceased their play and shot over the trees in silence.

 

“Dreamer's Fall. This is not a place that is wise to even think of venturing to. We lost one of our own here, and though the woods flourish... well, you can feel it. But it means we are close.” Her hand lifted, pointing out a shape on the horizon that was swiftly growing. The trees below began to thin, glades seen more commonly until they were replaced by water. A glass-like surface reflected the sky and the dragons, several dipping lower to pull in their wings and crack the surface with a dive.

 

“Mirror Lake. On the west bank is Hearth, and on the east is Stone.” Ashadel smirked. “Between hearth and stone, one will find home.” She said no more, but nothing needed to be said as their destination loomed before them. The island was large, centered precisely in the middle of the immense lake, and Maeve could see only two bridges that led away from the central island to either of the sides.

 

But it was the building amidst it all, seemingly carved from a mountain of solid rock, that drew her attention. A large wall had fortified the lowermost portion, the only access by land through twin gatehouses on either side of the complex. Inside, the castle had grown upwards rather than simply cluttering the ground with towers and spires, formed with keeping the mountain intact as much as possible. As Nazaku drew closer and began to circle the tallest tower, banking towards a large balcony, Maeve began to feel fear press at her again. She clutched at her companion as the dragon landed, sliding down easily while still in the larger woman's grasp.

 

“Easy there. Get your land legs back, but don't take too long about it. I need to get you to the Common Hall before the Headmistress makes it there, or it's my hide that goes on the rack.” Ashadel fussed with the straps of the saddle, finally pulling it free and sending Nazaku back into the air with a shout. There was a quiet moment, and then she whirled and grabbed Maeve's arm, steering her through a nearby archway and down several sets of stairs.

 

It took no time at all for Maeve to become utterly lost in the twisting hallways and numerous staircases, and she felt as though fire had taken root in her calves when Ashadel at last stopped before a large set of double doors. Turning to her, she drew off Maeve's cloak and tidied her hair, straightening the girl's dress as best she could before standing in front of her with her hands on her shoulders.

 

“Once you're past this door, everything changes. I know I practically kidnapped you, I know this has all come on fast, but your idiot of a father made this all so much harder. Just remember. If you need any help at all, ask. Silence is compliance, and you'll be expected to know your own strengths and weaknesses before long. Just... make it. No matter what, we're happy to have you here.” She paused, long ears twitching for a moment before pressing a hand to one of the doors and pushing it open, slipping through. She gestured for the girl to follow, and without much choice remaining, Maeve complied.

 

She was struck at once with noise. The hall, while large, was filled with the chatter of those who filled four long tables. Men and women of every race carried on conversation as easily as breathing, and Maeve found herself at a loss as to what she was supposed to do. Before Ashadel could escape, she clutched her hand and tugged her near. “Where do I sit?”

 

The woman smiled, her voice audible despite the din. “Choose. I can't do that for you. Where you sit is where you will live. Follow your intuition, and don't second guess yourself.” With that, the older woman disentangled herself and strode through the tables, stepping lightly up to a long line of tables at the front of the hall, where she quickly fell into conversation with a tall Draenei.

 

“Choose,” Maeve muttered to herself, standing awkwardly by the door. She looked to each table, chewing her lip as her eyes took in every detail of every person seated, and she found herself drawn up through the crowded room until she reached an open spot along the left hand wall, where she quickly sat beside a human girl and managed a brief smile.

 

The girl grinned back, leaning over to let herself be heard over the conversations. “I'm Tyler.” She pushed dark brown hair from her face, peering at Maeve with inquisitive green eyes.

 

“Maeve.”

 

“It's nice to meet you. Nervous?”

 

Maeve grinned, and nodded once. “You have no idea.”

 

“I think I do. I've heard some of the instructors here eat the students that don't do well.” Tyler adjusted her cloak, flushing faintly.

 

“That's not true. It can't be. Ash -...”

 

She ceased speaking, noticing that the room had fallen nearly dead silent, all eyes focused on the large double doors that were now slowly opening. They slammed against the walls, the sound echoing through the room. When it at last faded, another voice sounded, and Maeve felt all other distractions fade away.

 

“Welcome, students, to the Academy.”


	2. Chapter Two

“Fifty years ago, the folly of the Alliance and Horde attracted the most lethal enemies that any world has ever seen. Unable to reconcile their differences for one reason or another, Azeroth sustained devastation that threatened to consume the world as so many had been consumed before. The Legion slaughtered man, woman, and child. They converted those who were hungry for power, twisted them into things that only nightmares had borne witness to before. The leaders of the people were the first to fall, and new leaders began to rise. Several years into the bloody war that followed, with so much lost and everything to gain, a group of people gathered and attempted what had only been done once before.”

The speaker hardly lifted her voice beyond simple conversation, yet she held her audience in thrall. The soft rustle of fabric accompanied her steps, and it took some time before Maeve was able to see the woman herself. What she saw was something that she could only describe as flawless. Raven black hair spun in curls to fall down a straight back, whisking quietly along the fabric of the silver sash around gently rounded hips. She was slender, curved enough to be truly feminine, but no image of fertility.

Instead, she was the picture of quiet power, of unmistakeable strength that wrapped around the room and held those who were seated within her grasp with nothing more than her words. She paused in the middle of the room, at the crossroads where each table of students formed around her, and Maeve could see the briefest flash of dimly glowing silver eyes framed by thick lashes, of full lips seated in a neutral expression, and then there was nothing but the wash of black curls as the woman turned to observe those who sat around her.

“These people were no different from you. They were no stronger, and several were considerably weaker. They all held one thing in common. One thing,” the woman lifted a hand, holding up a single finger, “that was imperative to the success of what they wished to do. Desperation. The blind faith, blind hope, that what they sought to do could be that which would save them. If they managed it, it could be a chance at salvation. There was nothing else to lose... not when the cities stood in ruins, their people dead or reduced to shades of their former self.

“Together, they attempted what only one man had done previously. As the Legion closed in on these survivors, they reached into the depths of their despair and found hope, and ripped a tear into the fabric of the universe. They had no idea what lay on the other side, but anything was better than what they were facing. So they ran. Less than a thousand people flooded through this tear, herding animals and carrying children. The pure energy needed to do such a thing drew the Legion to them, and in one final clash the portal was destabilized and it closed behind those who had run. Hundreds remained... hundreds were lost. Their fates are unknown, but those who survive still hope...”

The woman watched those around her, then began walking towards the front of the room, where she mounted the stairs and turned to look over them. “This is not Dalaran. You are not wizards, or mages, or arcanists. Those are simple terms used for a breed of being that is dead. What you are, somewhere deep down in the untapped rooms of your mind, is special. You are the heirs of the first, those born of a deep desire to survive. Many of you were born in the aftermath...” Her head tipped, a flicker of emotion tainting her otherwise stoic tone.

“The Academy is a place of learning that will hone your abilities into formidable weapons. Make no mistake – you will learn, you will fight, or you will die. This world is beautiful, but it has it's own dangers that rival even the worst that we once knew on Azeroth. You are not children. I will not allow you to walk blindly on this world, or any other. But make no mistake: no matter what you fear, no matter what haunts you, no matter how frightening the most terrible thing you can think of, I am far worse.”

Silence met her words, an uneasy shift of students as they glanced from one to another and then back up as the woman gestured to the row of figures that stood behind her at the long table. “Behind me are your teachers. Your classes are varied, and every bit important. There are no grades; you will know if you have passed or failed, and it is your duty to learn where you have failed and improve. Consider your most dire failing grade to be that of death. Which is possible, and has happened.

“Ashadel,” the elven woman stepped forward with a smirk, arms folded over her chest, “leads the Grey Riders, an organization within the Academy that enforces the rules that are laid down, which will be told to you before you leave this hall. Not only that, she acts as groundskeeper for the Academy. She tends to enjoy speaking to the students, and you'll find her good company. If, of course, you don't get on her bad side.” Ashadel stepped back as another woman was gestured forward.

Tall, with white hair and horns that were swept back along her skull, the draenei moved with an aged grace that suited her despite her height. “Eaxoa is our librarian, working in tandem with Xaedryx, another teacher who you will deal with at another time. She also teaches the history class, which covers both Azeroth and what we know of Nalorn. Under her tutelage, you will learn of what we have faced, and what you will face.”

“Saiya,” a slender kaldorei slipped forward as Eaxoa returned to the line, “is our resident druidess. She watches over Dreamer's Fall with her brothers, who you will rarely see unless you dare to step into the woods. Which, you should not do unless you are in the company of a Rider, or one of the Wardens. She teaches our class on the care of our creatures, as well as riding the drakes of Nalorn... if any of you should prove to have the capability.”

“In regards to the Wardens.” Replacing Saiya were two Sin'dorei women. They wore their red hair long, bound back by leather ties. Black cloaks concealed most of their figures, dark plate armor chased with silver barely visible in the candlelight that managed to slip past. On their backs, claymores were sheathed and strapped tightly. “On the left is the Warden Commander, Gildedsun.” The taller of the two bowed her head briefly. “On the right, our Captain of the Guard, Forgewhisper.” The shorter, more curved elven woman tipped her head, plate grating as her arms folded.

“The Wardens are the military force for Nalorn, with their base quite far to the west near the Ivory Coast. These two act as instructors for the combat arts, but they also keep an eye on those who have great skills or talents with blades. Without the Wardens, we would be bereft of a great deal of protection. Consider them the elite of any combative forces that you might encounter. They are few in number, but each is capable of standing against a small army on their own. Don't let their beauty fool you – they are ruthless teachers, and vicious opponents.” The two backed up as the woman peered out over the crowd again.

“There are others you will meet here, others you will bond with. Your service here will continue until you are either ready to leave, or you die. The Academy does not release those who have failed to live up to the expectations of the Headmistress.” The woman gestured to herself. “My name is Kas'viri Lunarspell, but you will call me Headmistress, or Mistress. Nothing more, nothing less. Consider that the first rule of the Academy.

“The second rule to keep in mind is that you are not children. You will not be put into corners for disobedience. You will not have your desserts taken from you, your toys discarded, and you will not be locked in your rooms to contemplate your misdeeds. The punishments here at the Academy are specifically created to break you of your childish impulses to balk at your betters. I can assure you, you will not enjoy disobedience.

“To that end, be aware that the dormitories are mixed gender. We do not believe in separating men and women – you are adults. You'll act like them between the sheets, and unless you decide to do something excruciatingly foolish in regards to sexual conduct, there is no rule forbidding... fraternization.” She paused at the rush of guilty chuckles, though they hushed as her hand lifted. “Our teachings will be rough, and brutal. If you find relaxation within the arms of another, seek it.”

“The last and most important rule, is this.” Her tone became firm, her expression stern. “The Academy is a place of learning. We teach what we know and what we are learning in the hopes of never allowing the fate of Azeroth to happen again. To that end, the summoning of demons, or of powerful arcane magics, that might pull the attention of the Legion to our world are all familiar. This is your only warning, this is the only time you can claim innocence. It is this rule that asks no forgiveness. Break it, and your execution will be public and brutal.”

Maeve felt the chill of the words down her spine, and cast a quick glance to Tyler, who nodded back at her. The silence stretched out painfully, tension laying thick over the room before the sound of heavy footfalls on stone dragged the attention of the crowd away from the slender figure and back towards the door. A man, for one so broad of shoulder and of such height could hardly be anything but, swept from the doors through the crowd, offering the Headmistress only the faintest nod of acknowledgment from beneath the deep hood that cloaked his face from view. Beneath the cloak he wore, the large hand-and-a-half sword on his hip was only just visible inches from the floor.

Kas'viri, for all the cold that she seemed to radiate just moments before, warmed considerably as the man swept behind her. Her head turned just so, a pale flicker of a smile ghosting on her lips. The sin'dorei Wardens bent their heads in polite deference, both moving in tandem to make room for him as he stepped into place beside the blonde Rider. Her eyes turned back towards the door, and she stood as if expecting someone else to stride through. No one did, and the slight flicker of sadness was easily missed as she returned her attention to the students.

Maeve had seen several sides to the woman in their short time together, but the look that she saw Ashadel grant the man as he came to stand beside her was one that she felt she should not have been so surprised at. The woman clearly knew laughter and joy despite the struggles of the world, but the quarter-elf was now certain that the age that seemed to weigh on the Rider had lifted considerably. She knew the look that was given to the stranger; a look of love that knew no boundaries. It was a look that made Maeve ache, and she looked away to give the woman a sense of privacy.

But the look that Ashadel held was not one that was missed, and the sudden appearance of the man who made no gestures to introduce himself, or even unmask his hidden features, started a low murmur that grew into the steady chatter that Maeve had arrived into. Certain that the interruption would upset the Headmistress who had retained such control over the room until that point, Maeve was shocked to see that the woman had instead turned away from the room to speak quietly to the hooded man, who now had the full attention of all teachers but the Wardens, though their long ears twitched – they heard, even if their eyes were on the crowd instead of him.

“Who do you think that is?” Tyler propped an elbow on the table, chin held in her palm while she tapped out a rhythm on the wood. “I mean, who just strides on in to the room without getting her upset? She seems the type to not like being interrupted, doesn't she?”

Maeve shrugged, her hands rubbing gently at her grumbling stomach. “Don't know him. I don't know anyone here. I'd never been outside of the Low Canals before today. Yesterday? I'm not really sure...”

“Old Stormwind, huh? I used to have family there, or so my Da told me before the fever claimed him. That blonde one picked me up about three weeks ago feeding out of the bins behind an old tavern in Deadwood. Not exactly the best place in the world...” Tyler quirked her lips in a half grin, guilt visible in the depths of her eyes. “That's a bit south from where you were, I think. Used to be Duskwood, until the Legion ripped through and near-decimated Karazhan. The shattered towers -”

“Split and sent energy that warped the already dark woods nearby, and they were known better as Deadwood ever since.” Maeve shyly smiled, giving an innocent grin. “The old baker not more than a few doors down told me about it. Or what she remembered... her mind was going, so I don't think that's really the truth, but...”

Tyler laughed, pushing hair back from her face, briefly showing the angular jaw and larger ears that she clearly spent most of her time hiding. “It's close enough. Bad rumors about that old tower. Some people say it's the old Guardian's latent magic that sucked the demons right out of the world, but I don't believe it. I don't think they do, either.”

The two glanced back to the crowd of elders as they parted, returning to their seats save for the cloaked man. His swift appearance was echoed in the brisk movement as he left the stairs and strode to the door, vanishing around the bend. Behind him went Ashadel, her vivid green eyes focusing briefly on Maeve with a warm smile before she was gone as well. Maeve squeaked as Tyler nudged her with an elbow.

“Oooh, you've got her fancy. She doesn't smile like that for just anyone, you know. Old family friend?” Tyler's fingers were like weapons against her bony sides, prodding along ribs in search of ticklish skin. Uncertain about the contact, Maeve was trapped between wriggling right off the bench, and laughing.

“N-no. Well, maybe. I don't know. She knew my mother, but it's not really anything like that. Knew my father, too.” She felt the flush that hit her cheeks when her mind wandered to the image of her father mercilessly engraved in her mind; panting wildly on the floor beneath the boot of a woman limned by firelight, weak and helpless. Enjoying it. Maeve shook her head hard, scrubbing the thought from her head, but Tyler wouldn't let it go.

“No? That's no chaste blush, there. But that's alright, you can keep your secrets. I'll tell you this much, though. That woman will rip your legs out from under you and make you rethink everything you ever knew about sex. You can consider yourself a king of pleasure, and she'll show you for the peasant your really are.” Tyler shivered, a delightful sort of squirm that had Maeve's jaw dropping.

“You didn't. With... but she's old enough to be your mother!”

“Well, it's not like it was planned. We hit bad weather on the way to the Gate, and had to hide out in one of the mountain caves. She was curled against the side of that dragon,” Tyler leaned in, voice dropping and forcing Maeve to draw closer as well, “naked. Our clothes had gotten pretty wet, so it's not like she was just laying there all inviting. Except she sort of was. I don't know, it's hard to explain. She's just so... comfortable with herself.

The fire wasn't enough, and I think the dragon knew it. Looked at me with those odd eyes, and lifted it's wing up. I figured that was about as good an invitation as I was really gonna get, so I crawled on in there. I'd been riding it for hours, so I don't know why I was so surprised that it was so warm, but it got a little hard to pay attention to that bit of information when she snuggled up against me. That woman is soft in all the right places, Maeve... and her hands. I went from just warm to utter bliss in what felt like less than a handful of seconds. Nevermind the biggest surprise.” Tyler grinned devilishly. “That dragon is a male, just so you know.”

Maeve's jaw dropped, but all the questions that flooded her mind were silenced as the room drowned itself in cheers, and she caught the whiff of something delicious. Her stomach gurgled happily, eyes feasting on the veritable parade of similarly dressed men and women coming through the doors with platters and bowls, goblets and decanters. It took all of her strength not to leap upon the covered platters set before her and Tyler, who grinned at the delight the quarter-elf showed.

She needed no permission to pull one of the heavy covers off the top of the platter, moaning with joy as the scent of roasted chicken invaded her nostrils. She dragged meat and potatoes onto her plate, noting only after she had nearly filled the plate that Tyler was nearly dying of laughter beside her. She shrugged, stuck her tongue out at her, and began to eat, losing herself to the richness of food that she hadn't had the pleasure of tasting in several years.

Her haze lessened as her stomach began to fill, and Tyler cautioned her to slow her eating or risk being sick and having a 'second tasting.' Despite her complaints, she slowed as she as requested, her eyes flicking along the table to finally peer at some of the others. They seemed jovial and friendly enough, talking together as if they had been friends for years. Maeve, who couldn't remember the last time she had a friend, felt a little lost. But as a stocky male draenei roared in laughter, his body swaying backwards, her eyes went wide with surprise that caught the attention of Tyler.

No more than a few places down at the opposite side of the table, two women sat together with plates of food before them. One was thin, not quite in the realm of beautiful but certainly just on the edge. The severe braid that bound her raven hair gave her a harsh appearance, though her movements were gentle when it came to the one that sat beside her. This one was quite pretty, and there were similarities in the structure of the face and eyes that made Maeve feel as though they were siblings. Where the one was thin, the second was plush and curvy, her dark hair let free to flow around her face and down a chest that swelled with heavy breasts hidden beneath the pale silk of her dress.

The thinner one lifted a cup, bringing it to the lips of her sister, who drank deep of the liquid. Some spilled, wine dripping from the corners of her lips to trickle down along the skin of her neck and between her breasts. The cup moved, and the last of the liquid was allowed to spill over her chin in a scant stream, spreading the stain of wine on silk further along her generous cleavage. The cup was set down, and the slender sister looped an arm around the shoulders of the other as the drunken twin leaned forward, accepting the grazing touch of a strawberry dripping with cream that was offered by a gnome woman leaning far over the table.

The berry dropped, sinking between the pillowed flesh of her breasts, and the pretty woman groaned, her hands lifting only to stop, halted by the manacles around her wrists and the chains that kept her from addressing the little problem of fallen food. Maeve's ears twitched at the whimper she heard, and the pleased gasps from the gnome and her elven companion, a male who gathered up another strawberry and drenched it in chocolate, allowing the thick candy to drizzle over the woman's skin before offering it to her wanting mouth.

The chains clinked as the woman lifted herself, chasing the candy-coated berry as the man teased her with it, her sister planting slender hands on the thick hips and pushing her down to sit again, her lips close to the ear of her twin, who expressed her pleasure with a roll of her head, throwing it back as her sister pushed the silken fabric off her shoulders and down her arms, baring the soft skin and pale nipples that were tight with arousal. Suitably pleased with the woman's appearance, her sister gathered up a bowl of custard and, sweeping the loose locks of hair away from her shoulder, gently tipped the bowl.

The dessert ran thickly over her skin, drawing a pleased moan from deep within the woman's chest. Her back arched, breasts lifted into the air as the sticky liquid coursed over her, cloaking her pale skin like a glove. Her dulcet moans had attracted the attention of those nearest her, and the male draenei shot the slender woman a questioning glance before lowering his head to one ripe breast, capturing the nipple and suckling roughly. He released with a surprised sound, and as the dominant twin grinned, he squeezed the soft flesh of the woman's breast, drawing gasps from the surrounding students as pearly milk dribbled from the pale nipples and coated his large hand.

He returned his attentions to the breast, sliding his tongue over skin to clean it of custard that was only replaced by the insistent pour from the twin, his rough sucking of one nipple turning the skin a deeper color. The gnome joined, crawling over the table to seat herself atop the chained woman's hands, using her own to gather one large breast and pull the supple flesh to her mouth.

“If you don't shut that mouth,” Tyler muttered as the plush woman released a louder moan, her body shuddering in what was easily identifiable as the beginning throes of an orgasm as those closest to her traded her breasts between them, drenching her in her own milk, “someone's going to stick something in there that you might not be all that ready for.” She smirked at the audible snap of Maeve's jaw closing, and moved to push away from the table and stand, looping an arm around one of Maeve's own. “Come on. Theresa and Tiffany can go like that for hours, and you looked half-dead when you got in here anyway.”

Maeve mumbled something under her breath, standing with some difficulty from Tyler's insistent tugging, and allowed the taller woman to guide her around the table. They paused behind the woman, and Tyler reached out a finger to drag it through the layer of custard along the outside swell of one breast, and offered the digit to Maeve with a grin. A grin that was infectious, and Maeve found herself accepting the finger, not wanting to disappoint her new friend. Tyler winked, reaching down to swat the chained woman's rear before tugging Maeve along after her.

“We easily have the best rooms in the castle, personally. We're just about on the water's edge, but it's beautiful, really. Oops, not that way.” Tyler pulled away from a wooden door, glancing up and down the hall. “This way, I think. Anyway, our rooms are nearly on the bottom level of the castle, just above the water's edge. Ashadel claimed the caverns, but the draenei's room is down there, too. Eaxoa.” She paused to push open a door, and the corridor became ablaze with torchlight, guiding them down the otherwise dark hall. “She claimed them for one reason, and everyone else is jealous of it. All because of... these!”

Tyler pulled her into a room that smelled of bath oils, and lights blazed into life from recesses set into the walls. The room was large, the floor arranged in levels with small ramps that were forged into the stone. One every level, one or two large pools could be seen, the water within dimly glowing. Throughout the room, steam wafted on eddies of air brought in from an unknown source.

“We got the steam pools,” Tyler sing-songed, pointing to an alcove in the back of the room. “There are more pools back there. This is sort of considered the public bathing area. We have some people who prefer their privacy, and the smaller pools in the back alcoves help give them their security. There's oils, and soaps, and fluffy towels, too! This way!” Maeve yelped as Tyler's hand encircled her wrist, and she was dragged down another hallway with only a short pause granted as Tyler realigned herself with their position.

Maeve's eyes traveled the hallway, spotting an opening in the wall that gifted a brief glimpse of the outside. The water of Mirror Lake stretched out, lit by the full moon that stained the stone of the balcony a pearlescent white, and movement just past the archway tugged her on a rope of curiosity. She paced forward a few steps, and spotted the slender form of the blonde Rider standing before the cloaked man, her arms stretched upwards as if to reach beneath his hood and cup his face.

The quarter-elf knew the look that flickered across Ashadel's face as the man's hands caught her wrists, quiet words traded as he lowered them down. It was a look that she was certain she had worn sometimes; the look of pain when one had just run flailing into a wall that could never be seen. A wall they had met several times before. No good at reading lips, and not willing to pry into what was clearly a private and painful moment, Maeve backed away silently, bumping the still-muttering Tyler as she did.

“Ah! This way!” The brunette fairly flew down a hallway that had been worn smooth by expert hands, sconces flaring to life to light their path with warm hues. She stopped before a wooden door set into the stone, and pulled the large ring that served to aid in the opening of the heavy wood. With it opened, she swept her hand inwards. “Welcome to my room. Well,” she grinned, “our room. Go ahead.”

Maeve blinked, but entered the room which was quickly lit not by torches, but by a large fire that sprouted in the fireplace against one wall. Two large four-poster beds flanked a window embedded in the stone, a few pillows tossed onto the shelf beneath the window. Books littered the floor around the window, and Maeve smiled inwardly. Heavy curtains hung from each bedframe, providing privacy if it was wished, and Maeve's inspection of the bed that she was pointed to was finalized with a timid mounting as she tried to find her way through the generous blankets and soft sheets, finally flopping onto the pillows with a groan.

“I know. Best you've ever slept on, huh?” 

Maeve muttered a muffled response, providing no resistance at all as Tyler easily swept her under the blankets, tucking her in like a child – complete with the kiss on the forehead.

“I'll show you around more in the morning. You should get rest now, and then we can go to the baths before class. No rest for the wicked, as they – uhm...” Tyler smiled, running fingers through the dark golden hair now splayed over the pillow, sighing as she realized her friend was already deep in the arms of sleep. “Nice to meet you, Maeve.”

Turning from the sleeping woman, Tyler hummed softly as she climbed into her own bed, closing the drapes tightly before tossing her clothes out. There was a brief rustling, and then the room fell silent. As their breathing evened out and became matched, the fire in the fireplace dimmed to a low smolder, leaving the silver light of the moon to overpower the golden hues.


	3. Chapter Three

“Are you awake yet?”

The question had been a persistent one, with each round driving Maeve further beneath the pillows. As Tyler's question picked up the pace, Maeve's mind traded sleep for payback, and she launched one of the pillows at her roommate as the human finally dragged open the curtains, bowling her over with a cry of shock. A second pillow was tossed, and in a matter of moments, the room was filled with laughter and the thud of pillows meeting flesh, sending feathers flying into the air to swirl on the eddies of pillow-formed currents. 

Neither noticed the door open, or close behind the bemused figure of Ashadel. It took the clearing of her throat several times before either paused, looking sheepishly to the elder elf, each slowly sliding their half-filled pillows behind their backs in a failed attempt to hide the destroyed fabric. Ashadel simply shrugged, holding out the folded pile of fabric to Maeve, who tossed aside her pillow to gather up the soft cloth.

“A few simple gowns for you to use until we can get you down to Hearth for a proper fitting for clothes of your own. There's no uniform here, so you're free to find what suits you best. I just noticed that your bag,” she pulled the forgotten satchel off her belt, holding it out, “didn't have anything other than a few sewing supplies. Which I'm sure will be needed, as I simply guessed at what might fit. Once you fill out, it may be a different story. Here,” Ashadel reached forward, separating a filmy white garment from the others, placing a folded green one with it, trading the larger pile for the two with Maeve before setting the rest on the bed. 

“Sorry about the pillows, Ash. We must have gotten a little carried away...” Tyler chewed her bottom lip, shuffling her flattened pillow in her hand before tossing it onto her open bed.

“You, I dare say, have a habit of getting a little carried away.” Ashadel's eyes danced with mirth and tease, and she offered a wink before slipping to the window and pushing it open. Her hand lifted in an almost careless gesture, and the feathers lifted on a breeze, zipping out the window in a cloud of white. The window shut behind the escaping feathers, leaving the Rider to stride back to the door with a grin. “The birds love using the down. Come on. You'll want a bath before your first class, won't you?”

Maeve shot Tyler a look, caught between question and surprise, and both girls scrambled after the woman as she vanished around the corner and back down the hall. Daylight illuminated the hallways that had been cast into shadow on her first passing, and she quickly realized that there had been a method to Tyler's madness the night before – the halls were a maze, new tunnels branching off from the main every twenty feet, their depths locked behind doors or simply vanishing into darkness that wasn't able to be pierced by light.

Laughter accompanied their steps, guiding them to the baths. The pools were filled with students, most dutifully bathing themselves while a rare few were far busier bathing the others that inhabited the pool with them. Several shouted greetings to the Rider as she passed by each pool, and at one she paused to push on the soaped head of a green-haired elf, dunking him before she skipped out of the way of his grasp. His eyes tracked Ashadel, and Maeve shared a shy grin with him before following the woman and Tyler out into the private baths.

The hallway was almost stiflingly warm, the sides bearing curtains of thick fabric every thirty feet, five to each side. Tyler peeled off into one of the open curtains, shaking her head as Maeve tried to follow. Wounded, Maeve pouted for a moment as the heavy fabric closed her off from her friend, glancing at Ashadel. The woman beckoned her, and she followed her into a large room closed off from the rest of the bath. A single large pool was sunk into the floor, the water mirror-like for all it's stillness.

“Teacher's tub,” the woman explained, moving to a shelf in the wall to deposit the slim silver dagger taken from her boot and the dual blades hung on her belt. “You can use it for right now, since I thought you'd like a little time to have questions answered before it becomes harder to catch me. I'm being sent back through the Gate tonight, so...” She glanced back at Maeve, her lips quirked. “Bathing is usually easier naked, dear.”

“Yeah,” Maeve swallowed as Ashadel stripped, leather pulled away to reveal a slender body riddled with thin scars and marks of combat. A decorative tattoo hugged her left hip, roses and thorns extending halfway down the thigh. Her right ankle bore another mark, a black decoration of a feline claw and wolf fang surrounded by old runes, and as she turned around, Maeve spotted a rune-like design on her stomach, surrounding the navel in thin lines and dots. “Easy for you to say...” she muttered, feeling inadequate alongside the confidence the Rider exuded. “Now I know what Tyler meant.”

Ashadel peered at the girl for a moment, then sighed. “Your body is nothing I haven't seen before in the mirror.” Her hands reached, pulling the rough fabric to help it off Maeve's shoulders and lower, her too-thin body offering no resistance to the fabric's journey to the floor. “I was like you, once. A victim, someone used and treated poorly. It took me a long time to come to accept what I saw reflected in the looking glass, and even longer to learn to love it. So don't, not even for a moment, think that you're alone. You'll find that many of those we bring from Azeroth are in your same situation.” The woman's hands slid down her arms, gently resting on bony hips. “You'll heal, Maeve. I can promise that much. Until then!”

Maeve squealed as she was lifted and then dropped into the pleasantly warm water, shattering the mirror surface into a thousand droplets, tripled as the Rider slid in next to her, tossing over a thick cloth and a bar of soap. 

“Go ahead and ask your questions.” Ashadel twisted her hair around a hand, pinning it atop her head. For the first time, Maeve noticed the ring of metal around her neck, and the faintly pinkened skin beneath it, only a few shades different from her normal skin tone. The woman smirked, shaking her head. “Find a different question. Preferably related to you, your reason for being here, the Academy, or the new world. The important things.” She proceeded to scoop water onto her shoulders and neck, scrubbing carefully beneath the collar and then lower.

“I – ah...” Maeve pursed her lips, her curiosity blazing and yet shut down by the Rider's dismissal. Flustered, she grasped for the first thing she could, feeling foolish as she spoke it. “Tyler mentioned classes, but I haven't seen or been given a schedule or... you know. Things like that.” She stared as Ashadel lifted a leg, bracing it on the edge of the pool to wash while she spoke.

“Classes are voluntary, to a point. On Azeroth, it was different. If you were talented in the arcane, you learned what was needed to harness the power needed to work your magic. If you were talented with the earth,” she swirled a hand in the water, trading legs in a graceful movement, “you get the point. Here, magic doesn't work the same way.” The woman paused, then shook her head. “Well, not quite true. The Headmistress will be able to explain it better, should you choose to learn about the magic of this world, or magic in general.

“The Academy is composed of adults, not children. Children choose what they dream of being; little girls want to be talented dancers so they throw themselves at their betters in hopes of apprenticeships, and little boys engage in war that has been twisted into some magical experience that the bards sing of. Adults don't, choosing instead to logically take what will keep them alive, but also what they will enjoy. Most adults understand that you cannot change your mind from one week to the next about what will be the best for you.

“To that end, there are no forced classes. You must, of course, attend something... there's no living here and doing nothing, unless you want to be part of the servants, and even they learn mediocre magic. The Headmistress is a very careful woman. There are a good number of classes, and once you know what you want to do, then you can find the right paths to the ones that will benefit you best.

“I'm assuming that you're not certain about anything at all, so you may want to simply attend the classes that are made for anyone, even the people who live in the towns on the shores of the lake.” Ashadel slipped to the side of the bath, pulling herself up onto the edge. “I would highly recommend attending Eaxoa's class. It's important that you understand what happened on Azeroth, and how things have been going here. On top of that, she can tell you even more about your mother and father, and what they were a part of before you were born.”

“I was... sort of hoping you could do that. Tell me about my mother, I mean.” She combed fingers through her hair, accepting the brush tossed to her, running the fine bristles through the tangled tresses.

“There is very little that I can tell you that others could not tell you more about. Your mother was a beautiful woman, frail but very strong in her power. You will not hear me say this often, but at the time of your mother's greatest strength, she rivaled that of the Headmistress' mother. She was talented, and had a love of life that no one could ever hope to match.” Propped back on the heels of her palms, the Rider let her feet swirl through the water. “She was very unlike an elf, now that I consider it. Not like most elves are described, at least. Passionate lover, too.” She flashed a quick grin at Maeve's grimace, and shrugged. “What can I say? I couldn't resist.”

“Seems like you can't resist much,” Maeve parried, then flushed. “I'm sorry, that sounds so much worse when it is actually out of my head and into the air. I really didn't mean it like that...”

Ashadel laughed, enjoying her blundering. “I was a whore, once. Some would argue that I remain one to this day, but I like to think that there is a difference between the women of a brothel, and women like myself. I'm perfectly capable of resisting, I simply don't. Everyone deserves contact, everyone deserves the feel of someone against them, the fulfilling feel of mutual pleasure is something that cannot be replicated on one's own. It's my addiction, but I learned to turn it into something that benefits everyone. There is nothing wrong with it, no shame to be had. Unless it is intended. No insults taken, Maeve.”

Breathing out in relief, Maeve considered her next question while scrubbing the dirt from her arms. “Who was the man that came in and left with you yesterday? You were together later, too...” Her eyes caught the pained look before her question was even finished, and she shook her head. “Nevermind! Um, you said we'd go shopping for clothes later, but I don't really have any gold...”

“You do. Your mother received a moderate sum for her duties within the organization, and it was saved for her when she left in the event that she returned. She never did, but the coin was kept once we learned of you, for who else was to be granted the gold your mother rightfully owned? Not your father, for certain.” The woman didn't bother hiding her displeasure, ears twitching as a sound like the chime of a bell radiated through the stone. Outside the door, voices could be heard laughing and fading, their bearers vacating the steam pools as if bidden by the sound. “Time for you to pick a class.”

“Would you do the history one? The class, I mean.” Maeve's eyes tracked the woman as she stood and redressed.

“I'll put it this way. When you have spent even an hour in the class, you will come to see what could have been thwarted if anyone, even just a single person, listened. It is our fault, Maeve. All that happened to Azeroth could have been avoided if we had cast away our pride and listened to those who were wiser. Who were smarter. By learning the past, by seeing those mistakes so clearly, we can prevent them from ever being present again. It may make us out to be scared children, but...” The Rider shook her head. “We have reason to be afraid. So much reason. Now then, up out of the water with you.”

The sorrow that had her words had swam in was gone as she assisted Maeve out of the bath, helping her dry quickly before braiding her hair and pulling the white garment over her head. The green followed suit as an outer dress over the softer cloth, and Maeve couldn't help but spin a few times in the dress that was richer than anything she had ever worn before. Opening the door with them both fully dressed, Ashadel gestured for Maeve to leave first, and they joined Tyler at the end of the hall.

“History?” Tyler wrinkled her nose after Maeve explained which class she wished to attend, then gave a heavy sigh. “I was hoping you'd choose something interesting like, I don't know... the magical creatures class. Or the protections class. You know, something fun.”

“We'll do that one after. We can do that, right?” Maeve beamed as Ashadel nodded, and took Tyler's hands in her own. “Please? I promise, we'll do whatever you want after it. Right after it, even. Well, maybe after food. Promise, promise, promise...” She dipped and wiggled, bumping her head playfully against Tyler's stomach, unaware of the quick intake of breath from her friend.

“Yeah, yeah. Okay. We'll go,” Tyler muttered with an uncomfortable shift, shooting a glance at Ashadel, who piped up and slung and arm around the brunette.

“Maeve, why don't you go wait for us outside? There's a balcony just across the way...” Ashadel moved, guiding Tyler into one of the alcoves, drawing the curtain before Maeve had time to do much more than open her mouth to question the request, then snap it shut. Shuffling out of the bathing room, Maeve found the balcony, and waited.

Tyler's mood was well improved when she and the Rider joined Maeve, the younger women following the elder through the corridors up to the main floor of the Academy and then out onto the grounds. Ashadel led them to a large opening in the wall of the rock that the castle seemed to be made from, and the three of them stepped into a large cavern, completely smooth save for the floor, which had been recessed level by level to provide, as Maeve discovered by a simple look around at those who had already gathered, seating places.

In the very middle of the room stood a circular altar – or what she would consider an altar, as she knew very few tables made of stone or quite so large. Atop this massive, though very plain, circular table sat a single item. At first glance, it seemed to be little more than a very large pearl just slightly larger than the table in diameter. As the sole decoration in the entire room it was fairly underwhelming, but there was an allure to the object that made one wish for a second or third look. The item seemed to contain smoke, thickly filling the inside of a sphere whose surface was equally milky. The smoke moved slowly, barely noticeable but all the more compelling.

Following Tyler to a seat a few places back from the center, she lets her eyes wander around, catching Ashadel moving to speak to two figures on the far side of the room. The first was easily recognized as the woman introduced simply as, “Eaxoa.” A good head taller than the elf, the two spoke comfortably while the third seemed simply to listen. Shorter than Eaxoa but just a bit taller than the elf, there was some distant resemblance seen between the two draenei. 

Though her horns were much smaller than most, they were decorated much the same as Eaxoa's: thin cord had been drawn through holes along the horns, decorating the lower half and enabling small charms to be hung from the cord. But aside the darker shade of skin and the curiously tipped ears, the resemblances seemed to cease. This young woman had no hooves, instead standing on delicate feet like any human or elf. In her hands she held a long staff, leaning on it as if for support and partly boredom. Her clothes were minimal: a simple leather halter-harness of soft white, and a two-paneled skirt wrapped with white leather belts on her hips that left her legs bare. Around her head, covering her eyes, was a strip of white cloth.

The three conversed for a time, until the flow of students entering for the class seemed to slow and then cease. The chatter died as Eaxoa stepped to one of the walls, grazing fingers along the stone in a horizontal pattern. Behind the last student, the cave mouth shut with a resounding slam, sending the last student just barely arrived into a hurried half-leap that landed him into the lap of a rather large and muscled troll. The laughter that the action brought made the elven man grin sheepishly, but the troll simply looped an arm around his waist, keeping him in the spot.

Eaxoa's voice rose, and Maeve quickly decided that she did not regret choosing this as her first class. The voice held a warmth that was almost maternal, and though completely neutral, somehow carried the joy of her position as the teacher. Ashadel and the unknown woman faded into the darkness while the sphere set in the middle of the room began to glow, sending out a chilly silver-blue light that illuminated the first few rows of stone steps and the students that sat there.

“My name, as many of you already know, is Eaxoa. Like many of my people, I carry no surname as many of you do. I was born several thousand years ago on a planet known as Argus, which has long since fallen. I was a refugee, and a survivor. In this, I am exactly like you.” The soft click of her hooves on the smooth stone accompanied her words as she circled the table slowly, observing her students. “I have spent my many years learning of all that I can, be it by book or personal experience. My people, as you are well aware, are virtually immortal. That leaves me plenty of time to learn at my leisure. On the Exodar, I was a teacher. I cared for the younglings, and prepared them for their lives as adults. I told stories of the planets we had lived on and then been forced to flee from.

“In this manner, I have continued the history of my people. I have kept them alive, even through disaster. So it was no question as to what I would choose to do when the Headmistress spoke of founding an institution to teach the races in manners of magic and combat. To me, history is a weapon that is rarely used. Knowledge is a power that many take for granted, but with it firmly in your hand, you are more powerful than any who would choose to ignore it.

“Upon reaching this new world, we were saddened to learn of how much we had lost. The scant few books that made it through the Gate would hardly fill a cart, let alone an entire library. We mourned the loss of knowledge as one would a family member, and it has taken us several years to repair the holes left behind. Should you visit the library within the academy, you will find that there are several more books than there were originally. That is only by the effort of another teacher, who is as addicted to knowledge as I am.

“The books were a terrible loss, but we learned swiftly that there was something special about this new planet. It was on a stormy night clear on the Ivory Coast when we encountered our first sentient humanoids. You will learn of them in coming classes, but for today I beseech you to lay aside that curiosity. Communication between our peoples was very difficult at first – we had no idea that there were humanoid races, and certainly hadn't had time to consider racial barriers. After days of trying to communicate, we were granted an audience with what seemed to be a lorekeeper of sorts.

“It was then that we discovered that they had the ability to see into the minds of those they touched, or perhaps only a rare few of them have this skill there without assistance – we're still learning. What they learned from us was that we were a frightened group of people searching for a new home where we could exist and recuperate. I believe, also, that these people could feel that we had suffered a great loss, and the importance of that loss was interesting to them.

“And so, we were granted the Arcaenum.” She paused, resting her fingertips on the side of the pulsing sphere. The light brightened beneath her touch, and wisps of the smoke seemed to reach through the surface and wrap like a lover's fingers around hers. “They brought this from the depths of the sea, and offered it. Though we had no idea what it's purpose as when we first received it, it did not take us long to find out. With such a precious gift given, we gave what little we had that we could part with. The Headmistress gave the Lorekeeper several rare gems that were priceless even on Azeroth, and I relinquished several trinkets that can never be replaced. It was the beginning of our peace negotiations.

“These people, who had already given us a priceless gift, also sent us in the direction of Mirror Lake. You may recall the name from a body of water located in Elwynn Forest,” she smiled, but it was sad, “or you may not. Some of us were loathe to lose our home planet so completely. We made our homes here, and over the years, we have played host to the race that saved us.” Her hand drew away from the orb, the wisps of smoke clinging for a few moments and then retreating back into the orb.

“I require a volunteer, preferably someone who was a part of the escape from Azeroth.” Her silver eyes fell on an elderly man seated in the front row, and she offered her hand to him. “If you would, please.” 

The man took her hand, accepting her help as he approached the orb. The silver glow sent his deep wrinkles into sharp relief, his dark eyes almost bleached by the shine. As Eaxoa released his hand, he placed his palms on the orb's surface, flinching as the wisps of smoke appeared again and embraced his fingers, trailing up his hand and along his arm. Over his skin, shimmering runes appeared, blazing silver in fine lines. They swarmed along his arms and upwards, framing his face and covering his balding head.

“The Arcaenum has become one of the most precious possessions of the Academy, for this reason.” The darkened room blazed with light, sending most of the student into a frenzied stir to cover their eyes. Moments later, there were shrieks of fear that echoed off the cavern walls, silenced quickly by the raised hands of the draenei.

“There is nothing to fear,” the woman claimed as the massive claw of a dragon descended upon her and the man, threatening to crush the orb itself. The tension was palpable, several cries of shock expelled as the claw vanished and the room itself changed. The stone carved itself into cliffs and valleys, ice cracking into place while snow dusted the ground so realistically that several students pulled up their feet to escape it. A shout went up, and the students looked up to spy an enormous giant of stone lobbing an equally giant boulder straight at their heads. The scene vanished before it could land, snow replaced with stretches of grassland as far as the eye could see, the sky unmarred by clouds though several strange islands seemed to float blissfully above the rolling plains.

Her voice was a whisper, but it cut through the shock like a knife through butter. “Welcome to the memories of a man who has seen much, and now lets us view them as though he were simply a book that we might page through.” Her hands stretched forward, taking the man by the shoulders and gently pulling him away. The glow, and runes, left his skin and he was guided back to his seat while still wearing a confused expression. Eaxoa remained beside him as she spoke.

“With the aid of this gift, we have been able to replace countless books, scribing the words from long forgotten tomes simply by having them displayed through the Arcaenum. There is no person who teaches at this Academy who has not given their memories to this orb, and all who wish to volunteer their own are welcome to. It does not hurt, but I will freely admit that the experience is very odd.” She laid her hand gently on his shoulder, and the old man patted it like a grandfather might do to the hand of his children.

“It began,” Eaxoa's voice took on that of a story-teller about to unfold a saga, “with sickness.” Maeve's ears twitched at a grunt from behind her, quickly masked by the gasps of surprise as the room became a sickbay, filled with beds that contained the forms of countless individuals. Men, women, and children alike were being cared for by women garbed in the robes of initiates. “Long ago, sickness came before to the world en mass, and the results were catastrophic.” Figures began to move ghostlike through the room, horrible abominations of rotting flesh and stark bones that walked and shambled as men might. They faded as she continued speaking, though the sickbay and it's occupants remained.

“The sickness began to claim lives faster than we could tend to those who fell ill.” The beds began to empty, leaving fading images of bodies being carried from the room, of the priests performing last rites, of beds being stripped and remade until the room at last was empty. “As the death toll began to rise, blame was quick to come to the surface. At first, we considered it simply a fluke. Illness was not uncommon, and there was nothing that said we couldn't have brought back something from the wilds of Pandaria during our excursions. But the sickness began to spread too fast, and so the blame began.”

The sickbay faded, changing instead to a darkened land sparse of trees, with a formidable fortress perched atop a hill. Banners of blue, depicting a pale half-face, fluttered in what seemed to be a barely living land. “The Forsaken,” a host of walkers came from the front gates, different from the earlier abominations if only because they talked to each other as any community might, some with their backs straight and others bent, some dressed in resplendent robes while others wore tattered leathers, “were a race of people who were once human, but had since died and suffered the horror of undeath. Under the rule of their Queen, a ranger once a part of the kingdom of Quel'thalas, it was well known that they carried out experiments not entirely healthy to other populations.”

A woman strode through the crowd, her dark skin and searing red eyes covered partly by a billowing, tattered red cloak. A mighty bow was slung across her back, and she viewed the surroundings with the look of one waiting for something to happen. “Sylvanas was revered by her people, and she had partaken in things that were deemed dark and horrible. The Forsaken, considerably dead, were incapable of breeding. With no births, the population would decrease as wars and madness forced deaths. It was thought that this sickness, by then dubbed a plague, was another plot for the Queen to grow the numbers of her subjects.

“The varied races of the Horde and Alliance rebelled against this idea, and many attempts to reason with the Queen were made, especially by the Sin'dorei, of whom were a few of the descendants of the very race that Sylvanas had been born to. The Queen did not respond well to the accusations.” Pillars appeared flanking the gates, the decapitated heads of varied races gazing blankly out over the scene. “She denied that any such plague had been released, and took to killing those who had come to lay blame. It was not long before war broke out, and the Forsaken were destroyed, down to the very last walking corpse. Sylvanas was captured,” the students became witnesses as the Queen was bound with shackles, iron chains pulling tight, “and executed.”

The scene changed as the Queen's body was pulled apart by four horses, her dying scream echoing in the cavern before brutally cutting off. “We should have listened.” Eaxoa's tone was grave as the scenes progressed, fields of graves appearing in time-lapsed fashion. “We should have known. The Forsaken, even with how small their population was, were a creative and cunning group. Their demise did not cease the sickness, and though we tried to play it as though it was now simply a disease that would die out, there were some who had a feeling that the worst was only just on the horizon.

“It was three years of bitter war from the beginning of the sicknesses to the execution of the Queen. We had lost much, but we tried to continue on. Without the Forsaken occupying the land, the elves of Quel'thalas and the humans of Silverpine Forest began to take back their lands. Each wanted what they were entitled to. Battles broke out once again, with the only truly peaceful nation being that of the worgen in Gilneas.” 

The dark and haunting forests of Gilneas sprouted up around the students, humanoid wolves conversing on farms or working in mines, building homes that had been torn down, and discarding debris into massive bonfires whose ash was carried off over the cliffs and into the sea on invisible winds. “Without the Forsaken, the Gilnean people could claim their home, and only their home. That's all they wanted, but those who had long desired to claim their lands back became angry with the Gilnean people, and once more a wall was built between the countries; this time, as protection against former allies and not as a glaring act of withdrawal.

“When that wall opened again but two years later, it was to war between the humans of Lordaeron and the elves of Quel'thalas. The elves were losing, their population so much smaller than that of the humans, and the closest ally to the Sin'dorei had already been wiped out. Desperation became common,” Gilneas faded, revealing the glittering city of Quel'thalas, gold and marble streets bloodied and corpse filled, “and even then, we did not see the coming.” Eaxoa moved, and the scene dissolved like smoke around her, plunging the room into silver-lit darkness.

“Quel'thalas was the first to fall,” the city appeared again, glittering spires turned to rubble amidst the cone of rock that spewed ash and from which lava flowed, burning the once glorious city and burying it. The forests were gone, razed by unknown hands. “Pray, children, that you will never see what the city did.” Quel'thalas fell away as the sky took precedence, and the flying forms of grotesque monsters could be seen. “It is unknown exactly what happened. Those who were in the city at the time of the attack were killed when the volcano appeared. There is a rumor that a single mage summoned the deathly cone, unwilling to let her city fall into the grasp of the worst enemy known to the world, but... we don't know.

“The Legion, long missing from our world after the last attempt at a foothold, had appeared again. As swiftly as they had come, they were gone again, leaving the ruins of the elven city behind.” Eaxoa waved away the scene, and Maeve frowned as another panting breath filtered from behind her, as it had been doing for several minutes. Determined to focus on what was an enthralling story to her, she ignored it and watched as another land bloomed around them. “At first, we denied the existence of the Legion, but it was not like the elves to be so flamboyant about their destruction for something small. Forays out to the charred wasteland revealed haunting clues that sent fear into the hearts of those who were wise.”

Stormwind rose from the ground, the audience privy to the chambers of the High King as a demonic blade was laid across his table. They watched in silence as he argued vehemently with Velen and Tyrande, and both left the room with the man still yelling at their backs, their faces set in grim determination. “Alliances that had been forged began to crumble as believers separated themselves from those who refused to believe. The proof was so small, anything could have dropped the weapons that had been collected. Everyone truly wished to believe that. It was our mistake.”

“We were warned, by one who had spent his entire life devoted to killing demons and those who would summon them.” Several figures appeared, most familiar from the night before. They stood facing a massive man, his dark wine-purple skin tinted by the candles that hovered around the group. His muscled body flexed as he gestured to the broken corpse at his feet, his hands stained red with blood. “He warned us that there would be worse if we did not convince the world to cease their dabbing. He vowed he would continue to kill, even those who would dare summon the most pitiful of demonic familiars.” The kaldorei male cut his hand through the air in a decisive gesture and turned away from the group, his motions speaking of a barely reined in violence. As he stalked from the room, the Headmistress could be seen looking after him, worry creasing her brow. The dress she wore was bloodied, small scratches marring her cheeks.

“We were warned,” her voice was quiet as the room changed. The mighty human city was replaced by tall spires of purple tiling and opaque windows, the mages of Dalaran running through streets of blood as massive winged figures dragged those few who tried to fight into the air and threw the bodies until it rained with the soon to be dead. “Dalaran, likely considered a threat by the Legion, was destroyed utterly. There were few who escaped, though they are hardly proud of it.” The city crumbled under the assault, becoming a shadow of itself. “From Dalaran, the Legion moved to the nearby castle of Lordaeron, in the midst of being rebuilt since being reclaimed from the Forsaken, and that was demolished as well.

“Survivors fled where they could, and the Legion followed some to Gilneas. It is here where the Legion's blood was drawn, but at a great cost.” The city of Gilneas set the background for the scene, demons bearing down on a small group of figures. One was immediately familiar; the tall woman who had been named Commander of the Wardens the night before. Eaxoa's voice was quiet even as she, considerably more armored, appeared as well. “There was one, among the many strong hearts of Gilneas, that refused to give up. Her name was Brinella, and I tell you her name not only so that you might remember her as a hero, but also because she was as dear to me as a child of my own blood might be.”

The last figure glanced back at the two, her emerald robes moving to show the crumbled and broken form of a man at her feet. Two children appeared from beneath the cloak that billowed in the wind despite the rain, and both fled towards the knight. Tears streamed from the woman's eyes, curiously glowing as no human woman's should, her lips moving to send words echoing ghost-like through the cavern.

“Don't let them win, Tria. Take my children, guard them, and when they have grown, tell them that their parents died defending the land that is rightfully theirs.” Her words faded, her eyes becoming a deeper, richer green as her hands lifted. Words were yelled, lost in the storm that was brewing, and the knight turned and fled towards a large gryphon that kneeled, taking children and woman into the air with a few beats of snow-white wings. Eaxoa remained, and the woman known only as Brinella smiled a smile saved only for those so dear before closing her eyes.

The earth lurched, so real that several students screamed as roots as thick as a dragon burst from the ground, winding to encase the woman and the man at her feet. Eaxoa turned and ran, and shadows in the distance hinted that the roots had appeared elsewhere. As Eaxoa and her gryphon took wing, the students watches vines spring from cracks and valleys, chasing down land-bound demons and impaling them while the ever growing roots shot to the sky and granted death to those demons not fast enough to escape the terrible wrath of the woman and her beloved earth. As demons began to flee, the roots spread upwards, Eaxoa and her gryphon barely making it through the last tiny hole before they slammed together, and the entire country of Gilneas was encased in a wall of roots that encompassed even several hundred feet of the air above it. “Gilneas has remained completely impenetrable, and no on knows if the residents survive beneath the canopy, but I know that my precious student died that day, and those who knew her mourned the loss of one of theirs.”

She allowed a quiet moment, and the insistent soft groans that came from behind Maeve finally irritated the quarter-elf enough that she turned to find out what was going on. She blinked, caught off guard by the sight of the elven man from before with his legs hooked over the arms of the troll he had fallen upon, his robes hitched up high enough that the trolls massive erection could very plainly be seen pumping in and out of the smaller man's ass at a languid pace. The troll caught her eyes, grinning wickedly as his pace sped up for a few moments, fairly throwing the elven man a few inches in the air to land hard, impaled on his cock. Flustered, Maeve turned around and focused her attentions back on Eaxoa, who stood on the rocking shadow of a boat.

“Brinella's sacrifice stirred those who heard of it, and for several years, there were more sacrifices that gave hope to the people. But the Legion was unending, and they had begun to tempt those who sought a better end than being a corpse. It was no longer a fight against the Legion, but a fight that included those who had been friends and family just years before. We were losing, and so we escaped to the last place that we could think of that would be a home for us. We made it to Pandaria, and for a few months, we were safe.

“But safety doesn't come without a cost. Pandaria itself was dangerous, and the Sha were always a force to be reckoned with. We had traded one terror for another, and then it became even worse, when we thought it could not.” The boat faded, and the ground became the dark landscape that was familiar to those who had known of the Mantid. Several of the insectoid humanoids stood beside an army of mixed races as the ground broke open beneath the cloven hoof of an enormous figure, red skin cut with the black-gray of the Sha.

“We had never considered it. We had never thought it, and when we were faced with the reality of it, it was as if we were staring into the eyes of hell.” The clouds parted, wings spreading from the giant figure that threw his head back and roared. From the smoke and mist came others, lesser in size but equal in fearsome appearance – demons touched by Sha, graying skin setting them apart from the normals reds and dark greens. “The Sha found the demons to be easy targets, for who would dare resist such great power? Certainly not those who had succeeded in demolishing entire planets before. The carnage was... we had no chance. The Mantid were a mighty force of allies, but even they fell... so we ran.”

Plains of green grass spread out around the room, a cowering group of no more than a thousand people of various races swarming over the once peaceful valley. “When we could find no safe haven, we reached into the last bit of what we had, and we decided to try the impossible. What else was there to lose?” Five people stood alone, though none were familiar but the slender figure of the Headmistress. With arms outstretched, they called on magics that pulsed through the air, a giant rune slowly etching itself into the ground beneath their feet.

The outer ring of people turned to face the clouds on the horizon, as demons flocked towards them. More turned to meet the threat, a circle of protective bodies forming around the channelers. The rune carved itself, and as the design completed, there was a burst of power and a tear in the air appeared, wrenching itself open further. Those closest to the portal began taking children and animals through, flooding past the channelers, careful not to disturb them. The demons descended upon the shrinking group, aimed for those holding open the rift. Behind Kas'viri, the scarred male kaldorei drew the broadsword from his back and settled into a defensive stance.

There was a slowing of time as the two forces collided, and then the demons pushed through. Death was swift for many as the Sha-touched hellions carved a bloody path through the crowd towards the portal. The defenders, stretched too thin, could do little more than watch as two of the five channelers were cut down, and the rift began to waver. The crowd panicked as the tear began to seal, a herd of people attempting to make it through.

Ashadel appeared, carrying a young boy in her arms, shoving a brunette in front of her through the portal, a blonde male following right after. Two of the remaining channelers had turned to face the oncoming horde, the salt-and-pepper haired human male stepping in front of the silver-haired kaldorei as they worked together to buy those who fled more time. The wine-skinned kaldorei joined them, shouting something back to those nearest to the dying portal. Whatever was said, Kas'viri reacted strongly to, and Ashadel lunged forward to grab the smaller woman around the waist before she could join the three, hauling her back through the portal.

They fell through eternity, landing hard on a hard stone cliff, and with a shudder that shook their surroundings, the rift snapped shut, leaving only the face of cold stone. Survivors crowded them, splitting off as the distraught half-elf stood and ran back to the cliff face, slamming her small hands against the unyielding material. The crowd was quiet, some watching the woman beat the stone until blood stained the surface. Others looked away, holding weeping children to their chests. Kas'viri was halfway through drawing a design on the rock with her fingers when she lost the will to stand, and Eaxoa approached to gather the sobbing and defeated woman into her arms.

The scene faded, and Maeve caught the glimmer of tears on Ashadel's cheeks from across the room before the woman looked away as if shamed. When Eaxoa spoke, there was sorrow in her voice. “It was hard to think of it as a success. Only a handful of those we had hoped to get through the portal had actually managed it. Those who survived did so in body, but the minds took much longer to heal.

“Remember this, children. Remember our follies, and use this knowledge to prevent it from ever happening again.” Eaxoa's fingers reached to the wall, combing along in the reverse of what they had done before, and light flooded the chamber as the cave mouth opened again. “In our next class, we will cover the first few years of our adaptation here. You are dismissed.” The class rose nearly as one, leaving in small groups or in pairs, more subdued than they had been when they arrived. Behind Maeve, the elven man gave one last groan before the troll lifted his frail body off of him, letting his thickened shaft fall from the elf's ass before he stood up and left, leaving the man to clean himself.

Maeve was helped to her feet by Tyler, and the two left the room together, but not before Maeve looked back at Ashadel, finding the woman being held in the arms of the draenei, her shoulders shuddering with soft sobs. Tyler tugged her sleeve, and the two stepped into the sunlight, wiping tears from their cheeks.

“Breakfast?” Tyler muffled a sniffle in her sleeve.

“Yeah. Breakfast.”


	4. Chapter Four

“I think,” Tyler brushed crumbs off her dress as they broke into the sunlight again, “that if that class means we walk out of there crying every single time, we're going to need a considerably happy class after it. I don't think I can take that much depression in one sitting. Look at this, crumbs everywhere.” She stopped, lifting her skirts and shaking them vigorously out. “I knew I shouldn't have eaten so many of those biscuits. But they were so good,” she whined, sighing.

Maeve smiled, reaching a hand out to touch a low hanging branch while her friend made herself decent. “My father never talked about all of that. I grew up thinking that everyone had landed such a huge blow, but all of that... it was horrible. How many times do you think they've had to watch that, on top of remembering it?”

“I don't know. Countless, I'd guess. The Academy isn't that old, but I'm willing to bet that's one of the first things that they set up for people. You're braver than I am, to want to go back. I'm not stepping foot in there without you. That whole class is just... blegh.” The brunette slipped close, wrapping her arms around one of Maeve's, squishing close. “But, you promised we'd go to the animal one next, sooo... off we go!”

Tyler released her and skipped ahead a ways, spinning in the sunlight that poured into the courtyard. Maeve, still holding some sorrow from the earlier class, couldn't help but smile while watching the antics of her friend. Her pace picked up as Tyler vanished into an arch of stone, and the two broke out into a large clearing hosting a crowd gathered near a large corral. Maeve picked out several familiar faces as they approached; clearly, her chosen group was more fond of animals than the other tables. 

“Well, this is considerably underwhelming. Where's the teacher?” Tyler frowned, looking around and breaking off to speak to some of the other students while Maeve peered around. Her eyes fell on three figures on the far side of the corral. One was easily familiar, the silver-streaked golden hair of the Rider leader glistening on the strong sunlight. Maeve smiled as the woman laughed, the sound carrying over the area, soothing the worry the quarter-elf had. After all, if the woman was laughing, surely she was no longer hurting from the Arcaenum's memories.

The other two she had less knowledge of. Closest to the Rider was a man with copper hair, his lengthy upright ears marking him unmistakeably as either quel'dorei or sin'dorei. The arm he extended to grasp Ashadel's lifted hand was garbed in leathers of dark blue, nearly black, though his cloak kept most of him covered. Maeve watched as the Rider struck out with her other arm, and found herself ensnared and quickly drawn against the other elf as his face disappeared into the crook of her neck.

The final figure laughed, the large owl perched on his shoulder barely moving as the laughter shook the troll's massive frame. The words he spoke were impossible to decipher, and he moved with catlike grace out of the way as the elves dropped to the ground in a wild tussle that paused with the man straddling the Rider, both laughing.

“Maeve. Helloooo, Maeve!”

The quarter-elf yelped as Tyler's hand hit the back of her head, and she flashed a frown at the girl before looking back to the three. The elven male was sprawled on the ground, propped up on his elbows as laughter shook his frame. Ashadel glared down at him with hands on her hips, and the troll managed to stand only by keeping his grasp on the corral. Tearing her eyes from the scene, thoroughly wondering exactly what it was that Ashadel did if she was able to enjoy such fun while on the grounds, Maeve rubbed her head and paid attention to her friend.

“This is David, and uh... Brol'zju.” Typer glanced at the troll, who nodded briefly, tightly braided green hair clicking with the beads woven at the end of the shoulder-blade length strands. “Good. I was worried I’d get that one wrong, again. My tongue doesn't quite wrap around that easily.” The two shared a grin that made Maeve and David both shift uncomfortably. “Anyway, they're part of our class, and I thought that it'd be nice to get a few more friends around, you know?”

Maeve tore her eyes from the rippling muscles of the dark-skinned troll, nodding dumbly. “Yeah,” she shifted away from the grinning troll, reading the obvious invitation there on his lips. Not a shy man in the least. “It's nice to meet you both. Have you been here long?”

“Nah.” Brol'zju straightened briefly, rolling his shoulders and letting his dark eyes scour the figure of the quarter-elf in front of him. “Few weeks ah mos'. No' lon' aftah ya frien' dere.” He motioned to Tyler, who had taken the chance to drag David away, talking animatedly with him. “Seems yah been pahned off ahn me. Don' mahnd.”

“I'm sorry, I didn't ask he - ...”

“Ah don' mahnd, girlie. Nah need ta be apologizin' to ol' Brol'zju, ya?” He reached out, wrapping one arm easily around her shoulders, drawing her closer to his side as the crowd shifted. Contrary to what she believed from his easy and fairly charming grin, the troll was quite the gentleman, his fingers tapping idly on her forearm while he used his height to keep the crowd at bay. Always used to being forgotten in the crowds, Maeve found herself appreciating the guard. “Joo fahnd somethin' ya like here at de school? Little thin' ya are,” his hand patted the top of her head, and he grinned at her pout. “Bes' be pickin' somethin' ta make dem others no be pickin' on ya.”

“Just because I'm small, doesn't mean I can't take care of myself.” Maeve glared at the troll, and he threw his head back in laughter.

“Nah, I bet ya be ah real spitfiah, girlie. But ya is too sweet. Too temptin', ya? A little bit ah powah under ya belt won' hurt ya none.” He ruffled her hair again and then let the hand drop back into the comfortable place it had been. Maeve shot him another nasty look from beneath her fringe of dark gold hair, before curling against his side as the crowd shifted again, a murmur becoming gasps as something approached them from across the corral.

They were soundless save for the whisk of grass beneath them, approaching at a hard gallop that eased as they neared the corral. One bore the unmistakeable qualities of a half-elf, her body too thick to be elven but to thin to be human, and her sun-touched golden hair was pulled back into a long high-tail, revealing the characteristic pointed ears that were caught somewhere between the appearance of her heritage races'. They were pierced, silver studs in each lobe bearing a small chain from which hung a single tooth of canine origin. She was dressed simply in leathers that were more for comfort than for protection, her stomach bare. A halter-tunic of russet brown covered her upper chest, linen sleeves of white guarding her skin from the sun. Her leggings matched the color of her top, the knee-high boots only a shade or two darker, likely due to travel. Across her back was strapped an unstrung bow and a quiver, both items far more detailed in design than anything she wore.

The second was similarly dressed, though her tunic was of green and encased her torso completely, the brown sleeves of her undershirt left to flow freely while her companions were bound with brown cord at the wrist. She bore only a delicately crafted staff, her wine-dark hair braided from her right temple and around the back of her neck, where the ends hung loose over her left shoulder. A streak of white could barely be seen tangled amongst the dark strands, though she could hardly be old enough to be seeing the white of age for several decades yet.

Yet, each of these figures were not entirely the focus for the crowd, let alone Maeve. It was the beasts they rode that caused the most gossip. At first glance, they seemed to be overly large horses, but Maeve could not think of a horse that had so much fur. Sleek pelts covered a slender but muscled frame, their faces more vulpine in nature than wolves. Their medium-length coats boasted longer lengths around the head, chest, and tail, giving the impression of a lion's mane. They wore no saddles, though each woman rode astride their backs as easily as if they were mere ponies.

As the lead woman dismounted, Maeve gained a better estimate of their height. The blonde seemed equal with Maeve's own height of five and a half feet, and yet the shoulder of the beast she rode was nearly two feet higher than her head. The red-head's mount seemed only a few inches shorter, though the woman herself was taller. Both canids were the color of fallen autumn leaves, with darker markings along their vulpine features.

A hiss of surprise went through the group, with even Brol'zju clasping a protective arm around Maeve's shoulders as two enormous figures slid forward from the tall grass, parting the jade foliage with thick black bodies larger than two men standing shoulder to shoulder. Serpentine bodies lifted over the railing of the corral, piercing the deathly-silent air with the strain of their bulk. The blonde grasped one of the serpent's scales along the back, ridged and raised over the entire top of their bodies, and was carried easily over the railing. The serpents coiled their enormous bodies, the smaller of the two approaching forty feet in length, with it's companion that and half again.

“Into the corral, now.” Her voice was clipped and cool, matching the chill in her blue eyes. As one, despite the obvious desire of a few to turn and flee from the giants coiled within, the group stumbled, climbed, or slid between the railings to settle tight against the wood. Apparently amused, the blonde motioned back to her companion, and the woman turned and sped off with both mounts to join Ashadel and her companions before the group moved off out of sight. “My name is Houndstooth, and I will be conducting your class in the absence of Saiya. I do not enjoy simply lecturing, so you will be expected to interact in some manner in this class period. To begin, who can tell me what these are?”

Her hands fell on the heads of the serpents, stroking along the rough scales that crested over their eyes. There was silence, before someone called out, in a tone that seemed to ask if the woman herself was a fool. Her smile was as cold as her voice as she spoke. “Snakes, while an apt description at first glance, is not the correct answer. These creatures bear several differences from the simple serpents we know commonly, which you will learn over the course of this class.” The chill of her gaze set itself on Maeve, and she spoke again. “Can you tell me what they eat?”

“Um,” Maeve glanced up at the troll, who shrugged, before looking back at the beasts. “I'm hoping that the answer isn't humans, so I'll take an educated guess and assume... rodents?”

The blonde tipped her head in acknowledgment, and her smile seemed a bit warmer. “You are in luck. This particular strain does not find human flesh, or that of any humanoid, to be palatable. They live in the nearby swamps, where they find easy prey in the pilani and kortio that inhabit the trees and ground. You will, no doubt, learn of both types of rodent in a future class. They eat only twice a year, both times before they are ready to procreate.” Her eyes went to the serpent on her left, coursing fingers almost lovingly along it's neck, over scaled skin that seemed a bit loose, and bore a striking blue tint compared to the inky black of the rest of the scales.

“The natives call them Drogasti, and legend says that they are the descendants of great wyrms that once ruled the skies. As time passed, with several changes to the environment to cause such, they lost their wings and learned to live on the ground and in trees. You,” she gestured to Brol'zju, “should have a guess as to how they kill their prey?”

“Squeezin',” he answered bluntly, without missing a beat.

“Yes. Their large size negates the need for venom, though other strains that live in harsher environments have sacrificed their size for such adaptations. This strain of Drogasti, known simply as a Swamp Wyrm, catches prey and squeezes the life from it before swallowing it whole. Despite their fearsome appearance and size, they are relatively peaceful creatures who have no real fear of outside interference. There are very few predators capable of standing up to them, and fewer still that would try to get through the thick scales covering the top of their bodies. When under attack,” she slipped her hand beneath the thick lower jaw of the serpent, and it raised the first twelve feet upwards slowly, revealing the slate gray, shiny bands of unprotected flesh, “they curl up tightly to protect the softer underbelly instead of fighting. It is assumed that fighting would simply expend too much energy, and for a creature that only eats twice a year... well.”

The swamp wyrm lowered itself again, amber slitted eyes falling on a pair of students more involved in themselves than in the lecture, though the teacher seemed not to notice. “In the several years since we've come into contact with them, we have only seen a handful that have been killed or have died of natural causes. These two were birthed seven years apart, with the larger soon to reach the average size of a full adult. The Topani say that these giants are capable of living several decades, and they are welcomed when they appear in villages. They are intelligent, easily bonding with humanoid companions or keepers.

“But, I admit that the most curious thing about them is their reproductive habits.” Houndstooth gestured towards the couple, and the corral erupted into screams as the larger beast burst into movement, striking and and separating the pair that had been more interested in speaking between themselves than listening. The male, a tauren who easily towered over the group, was thrown back against the wood as his paramour was gathered into the coils of the swamp wyrm. “I see we'll be having a demonstration.” The cold tone had slipped into her voice again, and as the serpent settled itself like a king in the middle of the corral, she motioned the class closer.

“Drogasti show aggression during the pregnancy cycle, more towards the end of it than at the very beginning. The scales along the hood,” she motioned to the broad flaps of skin that had stiffened to form a giant hood, “change color from the typical dull shade to one of intense brilliance. This is a warning, as the Drogasti turns from hunting prey for food, to hunting for a... different purpose.”

The troll woman caught in the coils let out a whimpered cry as the serpent constricted around her torso, calculated movements pushing her forearms so that they were pinned between two heavy coils. The thick body undulated, pressing the tapered tail between her struggling legs until the thickness of it forced her legs far apart. Held against the soft underside of the giant, the troll battled until she found herself suitably pinned, with only her lower body visible. The teacher approached, holding a small dagger in one hand.

For a moment, Maeve was certain that she would rescue the trapped woman, and found that Houndstooth instead strode to the side of the beast, reaching over to cut through the leather leggings the troll wore. In only a few deft cuts, the leggings had been reduced to little more than chaps, the woman's tuft of orange pubic hair stark against her blue skin. Stepping away, the teacher sheathed her dagger and began to speak again.

“Would anyone care to guess at the gender of this particular specimen?” At the shocked silence of the class, she continued on without a care. “The Drogasti alternate their gender depending on what is needed in their surroundings. They are equipped with both needed organs, with more than enough room in their bodies. They mate much like snakes do, though the sequence of events is particularly passive with nothing extremely worth mentioning. Think of the most boring night of sex you've had, and then imagine it with no emotions or urges. Just instinct to pass on your seed.

Breeding is done in three parts. The first is basic insemination, where the sperm meets the egg. In the second part, the Drogasti embryos are allowed to grow within the carrier parent until a suitable incubator is found. This second segment is the longest, with roughly five months elapsing before moving on to the third stage.” Her hand came to rest on a vertical slit along the serpent's underbelly, the raised edges around the depression sliding against the troll's labia with every struggle.

“The Drogasti seek out incubators of another race, typically preferring humanoids to anything else. It is assumed that the Drogasti neglect to attack humanoid species as food because of their use in this manner. They prefer women, with obvious reason. It is well known among the Topani tribes that, when the Drogasti begin to appear with colored hoods, it is time to spend an overwhelming amount of attention on them. Drogasti do not, it appears, take incubators that are aware of them. Instead, they catch the unsuspecting victim in their coils, and the third phase begins.

Among the Topani, this particular event is a coming-of-age ritual. The Topani women are prepared, and released into the areas where the bred Drogasti are most prevalent. Most describe this event as particularly painful,” her smirk became a wicked smile as she looked back to the troll woman, “but ultimately fulfilling. Now, class, if you would pay particular attention during this...”

The Drogasti adjusted itself despite it's prey's objections, pressing the slit up against the woman's labia before letting the body rest for a moment. Slowly, the slit began to part, a finger-thick protrusion wiggling almost worm-like from between the raised edges of the depression. The serpent shifted, moving the prone troll until the tapered tip of the glistening appendage was allowed to slide between the troll's folds in a tease. The woman whimpered and squirmed, attempting to hitch her legs up, but the serpent only leaned itself back, forcing the woman to slide further onto the protrusion.

“Contrary to the fearsome appearance, the Drogasti is not a rough and painful lover. The rumored reasons for this are varied, but most describe the interaction as gentle at the beginning. Part of the intelligence of these creatures is assumed due to the fact that they respond to the needs of their incubators,” she pointed as the snake bucked, the troll whimpering as her fear made the dry entrance particularly uncomfortable. Slowly, the appendage withdrew, and the class backed up a few steps as the snake hefted lower coils to push the raised edges of the slit up against the troll's cunt, grinding there.

Maeve watched the troll flush and soon begin to pant, her mouth dropping open as the serpent ceased the grinding to attempt an intrusion once more. This time, the discomfort was simply the strangeness of it all, the troll looking anywhere but the class as they watched the serpent feed it start of it's cock into the now docile woman. The first few inches revealed the tapered nature of the thing as it quickly filled out and stretched the troll woman around an intruder that quickly matched the size of a man's wrist.

The troll panted and groaned, her hips rolling and shimmying in what was now an attempt to ease the entry, nearly urging the beast onwards. “The Drogasti secretes a numbing agent that dulls the pain,” she paused as the beast lifted a coil, pressing the thick appendage up further into the woman, “but also induces the woman's body to believe it is pregnant, in high doses. The Topani gather this secretion during the incubation ritual, and save it for when it is needed to relieve pain among the tribe.”

The serpent adjusted, artfully moving the coils surrounding the troll to lift her and let her fall, and Maeve flushed as the trolls resistance was deftly wiped away, her whimpers replaced by uncertain moans that quickly became rich and full, tangled with pleas for more. Glancing up at Brol'zju, she found him looking unsure and confused, his free hand idly rubbing the quickly growing bulge at his groin. His eyes caught hers, and she found herself coaxed to stand in front of him, his hand firm on her shoulder.

Her eyes riveted onto the scene before her, it was nonetheless impossible not to pay attention to the frustrated mutters of the troll as he unlaced his leggings behind her, a content groan escaping him as he took his shaft in hand. Strong fingers gripped her painfully as she tried to look behind her, his soft command for her to keep her eyes on the snake barely heard over the sound of his fellow troll. Brol'zju pressed close to her, his hips kept away from her back to leave a sizable gap between them.

The serpent paused, and the class gasped as they saw it's cock plainly outlined, bulging from the troll's lower stomach. The bulge moved, and the troll uttered another husky moan, her head rolling back against the stomach of her captor as her hips thrust forward in a spasm. Her fingers flexed, dragging nails over scales that did not yield, and the moment of intense pleasure passed as her mouth opened in a scream of mangled pleasure and pain.

The shaft of the serpent pulsed, squeezing something up through the inside, the troll's thrashing becoming fevered as her pleasure became true pain. It tightened around her, turning her frenzied screams into soft whimpers of complaint as the snake seemed to pump itself into her, finally holding her still, hilted completely within. The distended flesh of the troll's stomach squirmed, and the bulge shrunk slowly as the serpent began to slowly withdraw it's cock from within. 

“The Drogasti does not expel seed in this third phase. The incubator,” the teacher stepped forward, grasping the troll as the coils loosened from around her, allowing her to slide further down the stomach of the beast as it, with one last gush of slick fluid, vacated the glistening and slightly gaping cunt where it had been sheathed, “is now impregnated with the living... hatchlings.” Her hand lay on the swollen stomach of the troll, who had started the class lithe and toned, and now looked fit to bursting.

“In three weeks time, labor will be induced by a secretion made by the young, and they will leave the incubator. Who is, of course, unharmed.” She affected a concerned tone, touching the shoulder of the troll who now stood beside her. “Did that hurt, dear?”

The troll nodded, the pleasured glow gone from her as her hands framed her round stomach and then touched at her breasts, pulling fingers away at the dampness where her nipples leaked against her leathers. Behind Maeve, Brol'zju grunted once more, his forehead pressed between her shoulder blades as the soft sobbing of the incubator was coupled with the faint sound of his release staining the grass at their feet. His grip remained tight, pinning Maeve to the spot, and she scooped her hands along her skirt, pulling it forward in fear of having the soft cloth stained.

“Good,” the teacher's voice went cold immediately, and she shoved the woman back to her lover, who gathered her up in his arms while she sobbed against his furred chest. “Keep your lusts contained during my class. When I speak, your attention is on me. Be glad that this is not one of the species that eats it's incubators.” Her hand moved carelessly. “You are dismissed. Saiya should be present for your next class. I'm sure she'll have something particularly fluffy and innocent for you.”

The Drogasti had returned beside it's fellow by the time the students turned to leave, coiling briefly around Houndstooth before soft words were murmured, and the two slipped out of the corral in the same manner that they had arrived, vanishing into the tall grass. Maeve waited a few moments before turning around, catching Brol'zju finishing the lacing of his leggings. When he opened his mouth to speak, she held up a hand and sighed.

“I don't mind.”

He laughed, easily scooping her up into his arms to help her over the corral railing, waiting for her to settle on the other side before he followed and dropped lightly beside her. “Joo be okay, girlie. Joo a goo' frahnd. Speakin' of,” he pointed at the retreating back of Tyler, who had her arms wrapped around David's waist as they made their way back to the Academy, Brol'zju and Maeve forgotten. “Ya goin' with dem?”

Maeve sucked in air between her teeth, rubbing the back of her head. “No, I don't think so. Tyler's probably going back to eat again, or um... well, something with David. I'm not hungry or tired, so I think I'll just wander around for a bit and see what I might find. Maybe get some idea of what I'm going to do.”

“Mmn.” The troll nodded, the beads in his hair clicking briefly. “Ahlrigh', den. Joo need anyt'in', you come find ol' Brol'zju, ya?”

She smiled and nodded, tipping her head as he held up a finger. “There be ah fightin' class later, ya? Joo come. Learn somet'in' ta keep ya safe.”

After a few moments of though, Maeve nodded slowly. “Sure. It's not like fighting can be sexual.” She blinked as Brol'zju began to laugh, striding off with little more than a wave back to her. 

“Joo so funneh, girlie. See joo, ya?”


	5. Chapter Five

She wandered. With no idea of where to begin when it came to the massive castle and it's grounds, she decided to simply walk where her feet chose to take her. Her adventures took her down a path that seemed hidden against the stone walls of the castle, leading her to a small grotto that was empty save for the water licking against tall shafts of squared off rock. With little knowledge of stone, she had no idea if the cave was man-made or had come naturally, but there was something about the place that made her feel ill and uneasy. She was uncertain if the low growls she was sure she heard were from wind coasting along the stone, or something that lingered within the darkened alcoves. 

Not willing to anger what may or may not have been lurking in the dark, she made her way down another path that was bogged with water from the lake, the sticky muck squelching between her toes to yield for the harder stone beneath. Maeve paused halfway through the swampy bog to adjust her skirts, hiking them up and tying them so that they would not be stained by the mud as she wandered. By the time she found another path leading back up onto the main grounds, her hands and legs were coated with the black sludge, dark blonde hair sticking to her face and neck with the beads of sweat that had formed with the effort of her moving.

Yet, she was happy. There was a lack of inhibition to her wandering, an ingrained need to know everything that there was to know about the place that was quickly becoming like a home to her in more ways than her father's home had ever been. The thought of her father dampened her joy, and she realized that there was more worry for his health than there was the desire for his company. That vivid image of him writhing beneath Ashadel's boot flooded her mind, and she stumbled blindly over something that lay hidden in the tall grass that covered the wilder sections of the school grounds. Sharp pain wracked her as she fell, feet scratching along something so rough that skin tore, the wind knocked from her.

For a few long moments, she simply recovered. Pain dulled her senses until all she could hear was her own heartbeat in her ears and then, slowly, the soft whisking of something moving through the grass as if pulled. Her form moved, shoved gently by the unknown something, and she groaned as she twisted to see what it was, only to find herself near face-to-face with one of the Drogasti from earlier. It's hide was thick with mud slightly dried from the sun, staining the coal-black scales a green-tinged brown. The serpent eyed her for a moment, then nudged it's head beneath her arm not unlike a dog might in its quest for a round of attention.

Her fingers closed on the thick scales of the beast, and she pulled herself up as the serpent lifted, finding herself easily coaxed back to her feet. When she released, steadying herself after the few inches of drop, the beast lowered itself and met her eyes. Maeve felt the prickle of intelligence that the teacher had spoken of, and though there were no words involved at all, she felt that the snake was warning her to be more careful. Unbidden, Maeve nodded, and the Drogasti made as if to leave.

“Wait!” The serpent paused, looking back at her, and for a moment she felt completely foolish, and it was evident in the way she carefully spoke her next words. “I'm... do you know a place where I can rest? Maybe clean up a little bit?”

The serpent turned it's head back toward the path she had come up, as if considering the murky bog that it had clearly bathed itself in. Before Maeve could request that it be ignored, the enormous beast began to slither off towards a stand of trees that she could only just make out on what she believed to be the edge of the grounds. Her feet still stinging, the woman followed after, easily keeping pace with the slowly traveling serpent.

It guided her to the edge of the trees, shoving it's head through the particularly dense foliage to shovel out an entrance for her, then retreated back a few paces. Before Maeve could thank the beast, it turned and traveled back the way it had come, choosing the sunny field over the cool damp that the forest seemed to bring to the surrounding area. Grateful for the shelter after her climbing and the walk, Maeve crawled through the opening that had been granted her, and sighed in relief as the cold closed over her hot skin.

The trees were close together in the woods that she had been guided to, and Maeve quickly found that, between the closely knit gnarled trees and the complete inability to see the sky above the canopy save for a few flecks of light, she was getting more and more lost as the minutes passed by. After passing what she was sure was the same rock she had passed three times before, she paused and reclined against the rough bark of a tree, her lips pursed. Logic told her to simply retrace her path, but she couldn't remember exactly where she had broken into the forest, and so her choices were so much more limited.

It was during this reflection that she caught a faint sound at the edge of her hearing. The birds that flittered above her in the canopy were slowly tuned out as she focused all of her attention on that single little sound. Still not certain of her own tracking abilities, she nonetheless took a chance and stepped off in the direction of what she was sure was running water, not noticing that it was slowly getting darker and that the trees were closing in until she had to wriggle through an opening just barely larger than herself.

The sound of water changed to the sound of splashing, and though it had become akin to twilight in the forest, there was a faint light dancing just ahead of her, lighting the edges of trees in ghostly shades of yellow and red touched by blues and greens. Wriggling through another copse of trees, Maeve tumbled into a glade no more than fifteen feet across, set against a tall cliff from which hung vines and trailing twists of flowering branches. Beneath the large palm-like leaves, a small pond glistened with a shimmering veil of colors that danced on the rock that flanked it.

Colored droplets of water dropped into the water with plips and plops, each droplet sending hundreds of diamond-like droplets back up into the air only to fall and hit the surface again. Maeve groaned, realizing then just how thirsty and tired she was, and without giving much though beyond her own needs, approached the pool and sank down beside it, plunging her hands into the liquid with a satisfied moan. The cool fluid rippled thickly around her wrists, bits of dirt floating away from her fingers as if they were suspended in a thick solution, and Maeve lifted her hands up to bring the water to her lips.

Eyes peered up at her from within the liquid, and she uttered a startled gasp that completely shocked the thirst and weariness from her, dropping the handful of water back into the pond with a gloop. A sound surrounded her, and she pouted as she realized that there was laughter in the air instead of the sound of water. Her thudding heartbeat returning to normal, she leaned forward and dipped her fingertips into the pond.

They met resistance that she hadn't noticed before, pressing up against her even when she crawled closer and pushed as hard as she could. Until it simply didn't, and to a chorus of gurgling laughter she was dumped unceremoniously into the depths of the suddenly thin liquid. She stood, gasping for air, peering around for the source of the sound. 

_Plip. Plop. Plip._

Her head was bombarded, the laughter suddenly at her ears as something slick and sticky wound itself down over her shoulder and into her top. Disgusted, Maeve danced around in an attempt to dislodge it, slapping at her neck and chest in frenzied pats. The laughter continued, until at last she managed to slap one of the wriggling droplets. Silence was joined with a gentle gurgling sob, and she pulled her hand away to peer at her palm.

A girl whimpered wetly from her fingers, translucent blue skin and dress lined with phosphorescent greens and aquamarines that detailed out tiny bows and edges of lace, and the glittery ribbons that had once gone up the length of slender legs. Legs that had been reduced to little more than a gooey smudge against her palm. Immediately, Maeve felt a wave of remorse, and suddenly quite aware that she was standing in a pool of the little creatures. Her eyes caught the silent forms of bobbing little people, their eyes as sad as those of the one she held.

Around her, the previously laughing creatures dripped from the plant-life, tiny glittering bodies becoming droplets in their fall only to mold and mesh with the bodies of those they fell on. She felt her heart break at the next sob, and she reached out a finger to touch at the slick surface of the hair that dripped into little curls that framed a sweetheart face. “I'm sorry,” she murmured, and realized that she truly meant it, “I didn't realize that you were little people. I thought you were slugs, or so – oh, that was no good!” Her apologies fell on deaf ears as the goo-girl began to cry harder, dripping little droplets of blue-green goo down her bodice.

“Please, please don't cry. I can help you, can't I? Yes, see? I'll help... no tears needed. There's a pretty girl.” Maeve moved, ever aware of the surrounding goo-beings, all of which seemed very keen on staying out of her way. She sat on the bank of the pond, her knees and feet still within the water, and pondered her choices, quickly coming to the realization that she had absolutely no idea how to help the creature, nor any idea of how to get back to someone who might know that themselves. Pursing her lips, Maeve posed her thoughts to the creatures. “How... do I help you?”

 _Plip._ The creature responded, pointing upwards at Maeve's dirtied locks with one hand still held up to her eyes, as if taking just the slightest break from her tears to offer assistance. The area rang with response, and Maeve had to supress laughter as the gooey bodies of the creatures rubbed up against her legs and over her toes. 

“My hair? I don't know how that's going to help.” The sprite pointed to her mouth, and then slowly rubbed her belly. “You want to eat my hair?”

 _Plop._ The creature nodded, managing a pout that was capable of outdoing any of Maeve's own. Her hands lifted, making grabbing motions, released a cacophony of plips and plops in the rhythmic lull of sounds that Maeve could only place as, “Gimme. Gimme. Gimme.”

“Alright, I suppose I can just – oh!” Maeve blinked as the creature's arms lengthened, wrapping around a lock of hair with a shlurp to bring it to her. Her surprise doubled when the tiny, doll-like mouth opened to a frightening width, and she swallowed the dirty strands. Tiny hands worked the dark gold, and she slowly pulled the strands out of her mouth, leaving them starkly clean and shiny in comparison to the rest of Maeve's hair. The dirt and muck could easily be seen within the translucent body, and Maeve received a scolding for staring. Before she could apologize, the shimmering phosphorescence seemed to take over the tiny body, forcing the little being to gleam and glitter. When she returned to her previous state, no dirt could be seen within, and her legs were once more encased in the glittering ribbon-like bands, dainty feet shielded in slippers.

“You eat dirt?”

The girl pointed down, and Maeve watched as the swarming sprites cleaned her skin in quick tickling movements. Her toes curled, and she bit back an uncertain moan as she realized that her toes were inside the mouths of several of the little creatures, more apparent now that she was focused on it. The delightful sucking made her shudder, biting her bottom lip as her eyes closed. As soon as it began, it ended, and she watched them swim away with a groan. 

_Plip!_

Maeve focused, with some effort, on the little girl dancing in the middle of her palm. Head clearing, she smiled. “Well, I'm glad to have helped you. Perhaps you can do the same for me?” She chuckled as the girl tipped her head not unlike a dog. “I'm a little lost. Do you know where there are people like me? Or at least a place with real water, and food? Food I can eat,” she amended as the figure pointed to her hair. It stood for a few moments, clearly thinking, and then nodded, hair flopping and dislodging droplets that fell into Maeve's palm and merged back with the main body.

Taking the larger woman's thumb in hands, she pointed towards a thinning of trees. Before Maeve could dislodge her back into the water, she vanished up the sleeves of her dress, perching on Maeve's shoulder, ignoring the few strands of hair that floated through her body, a hand on Maeve's earlobe. “Well, alright. I suppose you can come along.”

_Ploop._

Maeve laughed, and followed the insistent tug of the creature as it guided her into the woods. They walked for a long time, minutes passing into hours, with her responding to the gentle tugs and chastising sounds of the sprite as if it were all her fault that she walked into a dead end of vines and cliffs, or a wall of trees that provided no way through. It was during one of these, with her arguing quietly, that her hand parted a curtain of vines and she froze.

She was a beam of moonlight that writhed atop etched bodies of obsidian in the dusky shadows of the glade. Maeve caught herself from making a noise, even breathing, as a large furred form slunk through the shadows to nudge at the pale legs of the woman who already reclined along the chest of a massive man. Without even a heartbeat passing, the woman's thighs opened and her husky moan as the great cat dragged it's tongue up over her bare folds was muffled with the engorged shaft of another figure barely visible in the dark of the glade.

There were seven of them tangled there; five men who seemed to have been cut from the same stone with eyes that burned the deep color of amber, bodies moving with a grace that reflected the easy motions of a feral cat as they ran hands over the moonlight skin of the sole woman between them. Her hair spilled like silver over their thighs, moving like fluid mercury as she was lifted into the arms of the one who had only moments ago been a cat. They fell together, her hands gripping the forest floor that flanked his head as his length sank into her, pulling a brumal moan from deep in her chest that seemed to be a welcoming cry for the others.

They encompassed her, the thick arms of one surrounding her slender shoulders and pulling her back against him as her hand guided his cock to her ass, and their pleasure was a mutual sound as the three sank into a steady rhythm that spoke of restrained lust and violence, with every rise and fall tearing another dulcet moan from the woman who Maeve would soon come to call teacher. Saiya's silver eyes were hazed, her expression one of unmatched bliss and utter love as they met those of one of the men who stood above her, and she welcomed his shaft into her mouth as if it were the only thing that mattered in her world.

They traded her, never shoving her as if unwanted. Indeed, it seemed to Maeve as though the released her with deep regret, always eager to gather her back into their arms and fall once more to the forest floor in a tangle of bodies that seemed to have no end. So wrapped in the passion before her, the hand that clapped over her mouth and dragged her back startled the breath out from her, and though she struggled against the strong grasp, she stood no chance as the unknown assailant pulled her several feet away and then released her mouth.

“Sorry!” A voice hissed, helping her stand before speaking again, “I had to get you away before they saw you, I'm really very sorry. Just don't scream. You'll be ripped apart before they even think to regard you as a friend. Though... being a friend might be even worse.” The words were rushed and breathless, but held a quality to them that Maeve could only describe as dreamy. “Hey! You found a Shlupp!”

Maeve turned to spot her little blue companion standing in the palm of an absolutely terrifying creature. Nearly seven feet tall and pure muscle thick beneath a tawny hide, the wolf-human that grinned at the entertaining figure of goo – currently busy scolding the wolf-woman with a series of plips and squirps – could hardly be called delicate. Maeve bit back the rising desire to scream, though her fear was easily evident and just as easily picked up by the wolf. 

“Oh! Cenarius help me, of course.” Feral eyes closed, and the form that was wolf seemed to melt and shift, leaving an unassuming human where once there had been a lean weapon of fear. “I sometimes forget about that bit. I'm really sorry,” she held out the hand that held the sprite, then quickly retracted it and held out the other one, “I'm Petra. Which I suppose doesn't really matter much, here.” Both girls jumped as a loud roar sounded through the trees, answered by several more. “Aaand, I think we can talk more once we're out of their territory. This way!”

Maeve resisted for a moment, squeaking into motion as another roar was set loose in the forest, catching the tail end of conversation as the woman led her through the forest without even looking around. “I can't believe you found one of these. They're so rare now that the Headmistress has placed a security ban on harvesting anything near them. I haven't seen one in two years outside of the Academy.” She whirled on the quarter-elf, green eyes flashing. “Did you find a colony? Please tell me you found a colony. That would make her so beyond happy, you have no idea.”

“I...” She had no idea how to respond, with the previously frightening woman now acting like a happy child. “There were more of them. Lots of them. They cleaned my feet and - ...”

“Of course they did!” Petra laughed, as if what she said should have been common knowledge. “Shlupps are cleaners. We use them around the Academy to help clean up the leftovers from food or spill accidents. They heal, too. Xaedryx loves having them around to help her when she's working on new elixirs. They can't be poisoned, can't get sick – well, mostly – and they have extremely long lifespans. But,” she poured the Schlupp into Maeve's waiting hands, “they've gotten really rare over the last couple of hundred years, according to the Topani. We've only found three colonies since getting here, and we're really careful not to disturb them too much.

“They're pretty playful and happy, though. I should probably take a look at that colony to make sure it'll be safe where it is,” she paused as a fainter roar went out, “uh... once they're done.” Petra finally took a breath, and looked Maeve over. “You're a student. I remember you from Ney's class, earlier. Aren't the Drogasti interesting? I've always wondered what it would be like to be an incubator for them, but I’m pretty hard to surprise or sneak up on, so I haven't gotten the chance. I wonder if that troll would let me talk to her about what she's going through – oh, there you are, Nyx.”

The foliage at her feet rustled, and out stepped a very large and very fluffy black house cat with eyes of vivid green. The dark purple wizard's hat perched upon it's head only just fit, and once again Maeve was struck with the uncomfortable reality that the animals of the new world she lived on were far more intelligent than any would give them credit for. It looked Maeve over with a careless glance, then looked firmly to the other woman and mrow'd.

“Oh, stop. I had a feeling that someone was where they shouldn't be, and I was right. I found her right next to the mating glade that Saiya and her brothers use and -... oh, don't you say that. I wouldn't let anyone get – Nyx!” Petra wrinkled her nose as the cat slunk back into the plantlife, leaving her to cuss after the striped tail had vanished. “Pain in my ass, you! Ugh!”

“Mating... glade?” She could hardly imagine that this place had specific areas sanctioned just for such things, and she coaxed the Schlupp to her shoulder before following after the woman.

“Yeah. One of the places where Saiya's brothers take her when it's time to breed. They've been at it since last night. It's a good idea to avoid them during this time, because they'll either kill you for intruding, or you'll end up like Saiya does. Granted, she does it out of love, but I watched once. Just one of them would wear even the most experienced mate out, and yet she takes all six of them for hours, twice a month. I don't know how she does it.” Petra shuddered, stepping around a tree into another glade.

A cottage stood in the middle of perfectly trimmed grass, a small pond dividing the babbling brook that flowed through the glade to disappear into the trees. The house was surrounded by planters of various sizes, most holding easily identified plants such as carrots or onions, all in bloom. Hanging planters held delicate plants that looked as if they might break with even the slightest breeze, while larger ones along the sides of the house held climbing vines and bushes of flowers she couldn't recognize.

There was one bare spot amidst it all at the very corner of the garden, an enormous circle of dirt tilled save for the edges and the very middle. A tall sapling reached for the sky some fifteen feet tall, thin branches already heavy with leaves. Around the edges of the dirt, a carpet of deep red roses sprawled over the ground. “Like it?” Petra beamed, gesturing with a hand. “Home sweet home, so they say. I can get you some food once I tend to the planters. You any good with plants?”

Maeve thought of the little pot that had hung outside her window in the Low Canals until a sharp burst of air had thrown it and the plants inside to the ground, shattering it. She shrugged, the Schlupp mimicking the motion. Petra grinned, taking her hand and dragging her to the closest planter and handing her a small trowel. “These are potatoes. Just take your hand,” the woman took Maeve's hands in her own, and pressed them to the dirt, digging them in, “and gently dig. You want to scoop and shift, don't just throw. Yeah, just like that. Wiggle your fingers down and you should feel a potato. When you do,” Petra demonstrated by twisting her wrist and pulling, revealing a potato the size of her fist, “just twist and pull. Yeah! See? Congratulations, you've picked your first potato.”

They continued shifting and plucking for a few minutes, until Maeve couldn't bear the silence. “You're a gardener, then?”

“Huh? Well, yeah.” Petra set aside her potatoes and stood, fetching a bucket that she helped Maeve set the potatoes into. “I have a green thumb, and I'm really good with plants and animals. So I'm the gardener and gameskeeper, in a way. Well, assistant gameskeeper. Ney's the one who deals with the animals, really.”

“That's the teacher from earlier?” Maeve paused to watch the Schlupp hang from her hair, twisted harmlessly in the strands and clearly enjoying the swaying as she leaned forward and back through the picking.

“Yeah. She's not really as mean as she seems. She has a short temper, but she's usually not so testy. There's,” Petra pused, pursing her lips. “Something has the animals on edge, and when the animals get agitated, so does she. She's always gotten along much better with them than with people... I was a little surprised she agreed to teach the class until I realized she had every intention of setting that Drogasti on someone. I think she lives through the thrill. Sort of lonely, really.”

“I thought Ash was the groundskeeper?”

“She is. That's sort of the polite way of pointing out to the teachers that she's the overseer. We all work together, and while we don't all get along sometimes, we know who the bosses are. For me, it's the Headmistress, then Ash, then Ney. Otherwise? I've only got myself to listen to – this isn't a potato...” She held up a gleaming rock, peering from it to the ground and back again. 

“Anyway, that's sort of how it goes. From what my father told me, when everyone made it here, the Headmistress was a wreck. They were afraid that her mind wasn't going to make it through. I think the hardest blow was when they had to kill Saiya's mother... Saiya and her brothers didn't blame the ones who did it, but it haunted them. Some of them said that they could hear her insane ramblings even after her heart stopped.

It all sort of bore down on the Headmistress hard. She was fairly young, then... and there were all these people looking to her for support. It really almost cracked her. So Ash and Eaxoa started to help out. They took the jobs that they could so that the Headmistress could focus, and in return, they were given special powers over the rest of us. You'd never guess it from any of them. Ash tends to just do what she's supposed to, and Eaxoa loves what she does too much to try to step on toes. Which is good, because I think those hooves would hurt.”

She motioned to another planter, and after explaining how to pull the carrots and onions up, went back to talking. “So, Ash leads the groups that go back through the Gate to try and find people like you,” she grinned at Maeve's surprised expression, “you don't smell quite like here yet. You aren't connected, but you will be. Everyone eventually connects. Anyway, she goes back to find people like you, people who were left behind – though that's a bit of a long shot, since only a couple have been found – and tries to find out why the Legion left.”

Maeve paused in her digging, considering the words. “What do you mean... connected?”

Petra, for perhaps the first time, looked as if the words didn't come quite so easily to her. “It's not really my area of knowledge. Do you remember the Dream?” She frowned as Maeve shook her head, settling back on her heels while she thought. “The Dream is a... a spiritual place. Like a blueprint for the world, that only a rare few can access and see. Everyone visits it when they sleep, but there are the rarest of the rare that can walk it when they're awake. It's a beautiful place, completely untouched by humanity and completely unable to be destroyed. Greater creatures than we created it, and all the incarnations of it.

Everyone was connected through the Dream. If you had the power, you could visit anyone, guide anyone. The power here is a little bit like that. Everyone is connected, because that's just how the world is. Those who are highly attuned can feel this as if it's a heartbeat within them. They can feel when entire places crumble, when triumph visits the people, everything good and bad. But mostly, the connection is just a veil of magic that filters through everyone. I... like to think that it connects every place.”

Petra's fingers drew a large circle in the dirt, and several smaller ones inside of it. “I think that the Dream wasn't just isolated to Azeroth. I think it encompasses everything, more than just as a blueprint, but as a whole and we are simply a small part. Everything within the range of the Dream is connected; every star, every planet, every flower and person. And I think that this lush, beautiful, pristine spiritual world is leaking out through fonts on every planet, giving magic to all the worlds. I think it feeds us, and we feed it.”

She smiled faintly, sadness tinging her voice. “But I can't talk about magic like most can. I don't understand it, or much of anything beyond the trees and the flowers. That's my domain. But I like to believe that I'm right. Because if it's true...”

Maeve waited for her to continue, leaning forward to poke at Petra's shoulder, but the woman's green eyes were fixed past Maeve's shoulder. “If it's true? Petra, you can't leave me hanging.”

“If it's true,” the velvet voice spoke, quiet and powerful, “then we are heading for a darkness beyond even that which was present on Azeroth.”


	6. Chapter Six

Petra hopped to her feet, dirt raining off of her hands as she slapped them together while flashing the newcomer a fragile smile. Maeve didn't need to look too far into the expression to realize that the girl that had so completely terrified her was in turn fairly afraid of the woman that now stood nearby. Pushing herself to her feet, she turned to view the newcomer who had so easily silenced the talkative girl.

“Welcome back, Xaedryx. I see you still have your flair for the dramatic...” The girl glanced down at her feet as the woman lifted her hands, pushing back the deep hood that disguised the perfect features of a Kaldorei woman, azure hair tinged with silver falling out of the cloth to spill over slender shoulders and a modest bust. A loose braid held the majority of the lengthy locks in check, tied with silver cord. “Have you come for the beast?”

“I have, Petra. Binobel claims the mares are becoming agitated without their stallion, and we hardly need a stampede. I was told that his leg healed well.” Pale silver eyes riveted to Maeve while the woman spoke, and as Petra darted off to fetch whatever animal they had discussed, the woman moved with a smooth and silent grace to approach Maeve with extended fingers. “You take after your mother greatly, child. Especially,” her fingers caught beneath Maeve's chin, tilting her head upwards to meet eyes, “in the eyes. There are many things hidden there that I will delight in discovering.”

Maeve's skin prickled at the words, a sense of unease flooding her stomach. Xaedryx's attention had gone to her hair, where the Schlupp still stuck like decorative gum to the strands. “Curious. You seem to have made a friend. Take good care of her, child. These creatures have skills beyond simply what we are sure of. Perhaps you will be the one to discover them. If nothing else, they provide considerable amusement in times of dullness.”

Moving away, the Kaldorei woman made a gesture in the air, glimmering light tracing her fingers into a brief rune that blinked out of sight. The pail, full of vegetables, lifted from the ground and came to hover in front of Maeve, dropping heavily into Maeve's arms. “It's good that you are here. It saves me time from tracking you down to begin reviewing your capabilities.” Her head turned, glancing over her shoulder at the soft sound of question that Maeve managed, and the pale eyes flickered with a brighter gleam.

“It has been determined that you will be studying with me until such time that you are properly... trained.” Her hand lifted, silencing further question as Petra rejoined them, leading a striking creature of black feathers and golden fur. The eagle head was slim and raptor-like, glinting yellow eyes peering briefly at Maeve before the beast reared and spread jet-black wings, tawny tail slashing the air quickly. “A gryphon. We're using him to rehabilitate some of the females we've managed to bring through the Gate in the last few years. He's one of six males to nearly fifty females, the prime of which is the Headmistress' personal.

Most of the gryphons we have were sired by him, and she's not the type to enjoy inbreeding. This world has been exceptionally good to this particular species. We have them creating aeries out near the Ivory Coast to raise their young, and we have hope for them. If they can be restored, then there is hope for Azeroth.” Her hand extended again, light tracing into a design beneath her fingers that matched one on the lion-like hindquarters of the beast. At once, it settled, and she stepped close to unwrap the bandages around one of his massive front legs, feeling along the fur. “Release him.”

Petra nodded, sweeping the rope over his neck, and the gryphon took to the air with a keening cry that stayed with them even when he had left their sight. “Beautiful, isn't he? You should see his most recent litter. They have gorgeous stripes and – ah, sorry, Xaedryx. I almost forgot. We found one of these while you were gone.” Her hands went behind her head, and she pulled out a small creature that resembled a rabbit with feathered wings. Holding it by the scruff, she pointed to the forehead of the animal, who hung as if it were terribly bored. “I thought it might be one of the wolpertingers that Dalah's always insisting is eating her carrots, but... well, no horns.”

The animal was dropped into Xaedryx's hand, sprawling over the woman's fingertips. “It may be a cross with one of the resident species.” She combed fingers through the soft fur, lifting a wing much to the animal's disgruntled displeasure. “It doesn't appear to be toxic, and fairly docile. I'll take it to the Historian and see what has been documented. If nothing else, the children might enjoy another pet.” Her cloak moved aside, and she pulled a satchel out that easily held the rabbit-creature as it was set in. It resisted, poking it's head out to nibble on the sheath of an ornate dagger that was bound to her hip, the hilt composed of a weaving of silver and softly glowing purple glass.

“Forgive me, Petra. I must take your new friend with me. The Headmistress has placed her under my care for the time being, and it is better that I begin as soon as possible. I do not want a repeat of the last one.” Petra shot a glance to Maeve and frowned, reaching out to take the bucket of vegetables. “I will send word to you when I’ve completed my research. Do be careful. Saiya's brothers are particularly territorial this night. This way, child.” 

Maeve gave Petra an apologetic look before starting after the Kaldorei, who slowed only long enough to allow the quarter-elf to catch up, then settled on an easy stride down a path that wove through trees and over a bridge that sat astride a small stream just too large to cross with a jump. Their speed made it difficult to speak, with the only break coming as Xaedryx paused to view the sky, where the massive shapes of multiple dragons could be seen circling the highest points of the castle before tearing off towards the south.

“It seems there will be quite the altercation when Ashadel returns. It's rare for her to take such a large group with her, let alone several Riders and Wardens. It will be some time before we see them again. Does this disturb you?” At Maeve's shake of her head, she smiled, though the actions made Maeve's skin crawl despite the beauty of it. “You will see her again before you know it. Until then, you are mine.”

So distracted by the insinuation in the final words, she hardly noticed that they had approached and then entered the cavern that she had been in previously until she saw the glimmer of the Arcaenum in the middle of the room. Before she could ask, the Kaldorei laid her hand on the wall, plunging the room into complete darkness as the door slammed shut behind them. The Arcaenum brightened, lighting the stairs that they both stepped down. Xaedryx's fingers touched the orb, and the mist swept around the delicate fingers and up her arm.

“We will start with the truth, as I refuse to work with illusions. To begin with the truth, we must go back to the beginning. Sit.” She pointed to a chair that had been brought out sometime in the day, and Maeve planted herself in it without complaining. As soon as she did, the area lit into brilliant color then dimmed, revealing a massive flat landscape of grass and floating islands at twilight. A fire burned beneath the Arcaenum, large carts of some old wood pulled into a tight circle while countless men and women of every race laughed and danced.

“Your mother and father were part of an organization that mostly simply called 'the Caravan.' We were a mercenary regiment, as well as entertainment and a variety of other things. Most of which are unimportant. Your mother came to us first not long after the fall of Kael'thas. Your father came much later, after his services were no longer needed in the fight against the Lich King. While I wish I could tell you that your father was a talented man with a pleasant demeanor, I'm afraid I cannot. He was handsome, but his greatest skills lay more in the bedding of women than in fighting or magic. 

“This, however, never seemed to disturb your mother.” An elven woman danced with another, the blonde hair of both lit into a golden fire by the light of the bonfire as they twisted and spun together and away only to be caught up by men who continued the dizzying display. “She had a heart of fire and a grace that matched the wind. There were none who met her who could say they didn't love her in some way or another... but she had eyes alone for your father. Only him, much to the sorrow of many fine men.”

The scene changed and became dark, and Maeve realized that they were viewing the scene as if flying above. Below her, the figure that she knew as mother dashed wildly through a thicket, stumbling and crying out in pain before dragging herself up to her feet and tearing off again. “It would be that insane, maddening love that would be her betrayal. Her end. When everyone believed she could rise no higher, she fell.” Once more her mother hit the ground, and her screams turned from terrified into ones of agonizing pain. The scent of blood filled Maeve's senses until she was sure that she would lose the contents of her stomach.

But even when she believed that to be the worst, the scene changed and she was beside her mother, watching her body be shredded into strips of skin and meat with the screams ceasing after becoming little more than gurgling moans, the horrible sight of her father watching the carnage from the trees was what truly pushed her over. As she relieved her stomach of the meal from earlier that morning, Xaedryx continued, her tone mournful. “Your mother was a beautiful star, a hope. Your father turned on her for greed and wealth, and to the demons that were ripping through our world, he gave one of the greatest weapons.

“For that, he was cast out. We tried to have him killed, but he had allied too closely with the Legion... and then we discovered you. For several years, we prayed that you would live untainted and untouched. For the most part, save for your father's twisted perversions, you did. In truth, Ashadel was given release to kill your father and take you away... but she has been in such a position as you were, and she believed that the deepest cut for him was to take what might have brought him sanctuary. He knew that we would not kill him as long as you were with him, but his life is forfeit without you. Not only to us, but to the very Legion he serves.”

The images vanished, replaced instead by scrolling images on the walls. Several teachers and some students, each with countless notes in an unknown hand, stood silently gazing from the images on the wall. “Your mother would have flourished here, I believe. Instead, we must use you for our purposes. Brutal as that sounds,” her voice gentled, and she set a hand on Maeve's heaving shoulders, “you must believe me when I say that there is no one who knew your mother who would not jump at the chance to see you stand in her footsteps. But the truth of the matter is that only you can choose this. There are those among us who see great potential in you.

“You are not a god or deity. You are a powerful young woman locked inside a frightened child, and this is a world that it swiftly coming to know what war and pain is truly like. It will need everyone of every skill to fight the darkness that is coming. On a grand scale, you are not special. But in this tiny moment, you can be the most important tipping piece. For now, I am to teach you. I am to teach you about truth, no matter the pain. When I am not teaching you, others will be. You will find power where you think there is none. Those who would crush you, those like your father,” she cupped the sobbing girl's chin in her hand, forcing her to look her in the eyes, “will be nothing. But I cannot truly teach what refuses to understand. Harness your hurt and your anger, all that you feel right now, and change it into something good. If not for us, if not for this world, then for her.”

The scrolling images vanished, leaving no one but a figure sitting in a rocking chair singing to a small bundle in her arms. The tune was soft, but rang like church bells within Maeve's mind, and she choked back a sob. “To do this, to show you what others would have hidden, is something that I am not proud of. If I had it any other way, this would be done gently and with more tact. A part of me refuses to treat you like a child. I hope you do not learn to hate me for it. Now, with only a nod or a shake of your head, do you wish to continue the lesson tonight?”

Xaedryx waited patiently while Maeve gathered her thoughts and silenced her sobs, wiping her face with her sleeve. The tiny Schlupp 'plipped' at her as if in question, but after several minutes had passed, Maeve nodded. Amidst the pain and the fear, there was something she had never felt before. Far beyond anger or hate, it was something she could not put a name to, yet it burned her like a sun had been made to exist within her.

“First, eat.” A table appeared at her side, spread with a simple plate of sliced meats and cheeses. Crackers on another, smaller, plate and a tall glass of milk completed the modest meal. “I'm not blind, child. Nor am I deaf. Your stomach was grumbling all the way here, and now your body screams for nourishment. Eat.” While Maeve complied, Xaedryx ran her hands over the Arcaenum not unlike the way a lover might have touched her mate.

“The magic of the two worlds is different,” she began as she sensed Maeve finish, “in some ways. The most prominent is that it does not seem to restrict itself to anyone. All who wish to learn 'magic,' as it were, are completely capable of doing so. The magic begins when you become connected, and this is where it begins to change from what we understand. On Azeroth, the magic was varied. Some claimed their healing powers were the result of strong faith in their religion. Some believed that their offensive abilities were due to long periods of study. While no one was exactly wrong, that particular sort of magic doesn't exist here.

“The magic here seems to attune itself directly to you. We've had several who were excellent spell weavers who have suddenly become healers. There is one magic, however, that all have access to, and it is based in runeweaving. For one reason or another, runes have become an excellent and particularly harmless way to channel the latent magic that floods this land. Each rune is unique in it's creation, which makes for an ease of use for those who wish to specialize in only a few. For example, Ashadel limits her runes to those of enhancements – things to help her see or hear better, to move faster, to hide her.

“Petra's teachings have her using augmentation runes to supplement her natural capabilities with the latent magic. You will find others who have specialized in healing runes, in wards, in charms... the list is endless. These runes can be chained, creating a larger effect of a more dangerous whole. There are some, even, who can not only chain the runes but can use both enhancements and augmentations together. These runes are completely different from their bases, and are horrifically difficult to hold for long periods of time. Out of the several hundred who fled Azeroth, only five have harnessed this ability – the Headmistress, myself, Eaxoa, Sestri and Lorcan.

“Of those who have been born here, there are several more. Petra, the daughter of Lorcan, shows the capability but holds a considerable amount of fear towards doing so. For lack of more creative terminology, we call these special individuals Weavers. But there are others besides the Weavers who have shown considerable talent. We are coming to believe that the magic of this world itself is an augmenting and filling power. 

“Imagine,” Xaedryx sat beside her, “that you held within yourself the capability of healing. You've never done it, but you know that you could. It's in your blood, it's in your bones, and every bit of you knows that you can do it if you just had that... push.” The woman folded her hands before continuing. “The magic here in this world reacts to that, filling in the missing pieces like a bridge over a stream. It gives you the power that your body knows, without dangling it in front of your face. But there is a risk to this. Once your body accepts a power, it cannot be gotten rid of by natural means.

“There are two in the Academy that we call Neutralizers, and in their name is their purpose. Their magic is one that utterly drains and destroys the magic of their target, leaving them not only a powerless being, but a husk of their former self. That is why we urge the students to be careful of their focus – it is possible to trick the magic here into filling the gaps of a magic that you cannot handle. A healer becomes a mage, who cannot handle the destructive forces, is a wild opponent who will quickly lose their minds.

“But even then, there are those who are so very special and rare. These have been utterly changed by the magic into something that... is different. Unfortunately, they tend to be incredibly reclusive pains that refuse to provide much knowledge at all as to how they became as they are.” Her lips pursed.

“Now then. For this moment, the important thing to remember are the Weavers. Runes are a very basic magic that I will have you study until we can find where you settle on their scale. As time progresses, we will venture further. Your training with me will end when you can resist me and suitably fight against my weakest skills.” She stood, moving back to the orb.

Maeve digested the information slowly, repeating most of it in her mind until the last bit seemed to come up again and again. Her eyes focused on the limned figure of the elven woman in front of her, so unassuming and yet...

“Your thoughts roll off of you like snow down a mountainside. Here.” Xaedryx moved to a bare patch of stone and bent, drawing out a complicated rune array in the dirt before standing back. “Stand in the middle of that, if you would. It's your choice, but perhaps you will understand what I am intending for you. As I said, I cannot teach you if you won't accept. Leave your pet in your chair.”

Maeve stood slowly, gently taking the drowsy Schlupp from her shoulder to deposit it on the seat and move within the array. The moment she came to a stand still, the design lit with a dull purple coloring, pulsing in time to her heartbeat. 

“Your goal is to resist me. I will not lie... I do not expect you to do well. You can start by removing your dress.” Xaedryx made her way to her own seat, folding one leg over the other as Maeve struggled inwardly against the instruction, a strong compulsion making it's way through her body until she had the distinct feeling that she was moving as if by puppetry. The Kaldorei's expression was blank as Maeve's hands moved the the ties of her dress, undoing them and shrugging the simple fabric from her shoulders to let it spill around her feet.

Her body trembled, and yet as Xaedryx's order for her to step forward and then kneel was said, she was following it, the smooth stone cold against her knees. The Kaldorei moved, and Maeve had the feeling that this was a woman who did not simply make the demonstrations with anything more than teaching in mind.

_Crawl to me._

Maeve dropped to her hands and knees, moving slowly towards the larger woman. No matter how quickly she wished to go, no matter how much she wanted for this to be over, she had the feeling that the woman wanted it this way. For Maeve to feel the stone beneath her legs and palms, for her to feel the movement of the air over her body as she crawled towards her better, for her to understand that she did nothing at this moment unless the woman desired it of her. She was helpless, moreso than she had ever been with her father, and despite it all, she felt no fear. Only trust.

_Sit in my lap, with your back to my chest. Spread your legs wide, over my own._

She didn't know what to expect as she pulled herself slowly into the clothed lap. The supple breasts were a surprise, the gentle touch as the woman adjusted her too-slender frame to be comfortable and pulled her legs further apart. “There, now. You will come to understand that magic has no meaning to anyone unless it can be controlled. If someone can control you,” the whispered command for her to slide her fingers along her snatch came, and with a quiet sob, she complied, “then they can control everything. Your thoughts, your emotions, your magic, your power. Everything you are becomes theirs.”

The slender elven hands came to rest on her hips and then around, knitting in her fingers and halting the slow rubbing that she had begun. Even with the grip, her hands still tried to move, and her body became wracked with pain that forced a groan from her, and then a sharp whimper. Xaedryx released the hands, and in moments, driven by the silent urges, her fingers found purchase within her slit, delving deep to find the places that had yearned to be touched and yet always missed at the clumsy hands of her father.

“Pain comes from disobedience. Imagine, child, how it can feel to be given an order and then feel pain as you try to fulfill it and fail. The sweetest pain can be a weapon. This was the weakest of my compulsion arrays. The weakest of the ones that will settle in your mind and force you to do what I want you to do to you, or anyone else. And while you sit here writhing in my lap, I can be controlling your life. Think of the people who could take advantage of you, sprawled like this. It's dangerous...”

Maeve's thumb danced over her clit, and she mewled out tangled apologies and pleas, all of which fell on the ears of the woman and were ignored. “So, you must learn. You must learn control, and you will learn all else as well. Best finish, dear...” Maeve felt the fingers on the small of her spine move, dancing out a design that itched along her skin. Her mind focused on that, all for a moment, and then Xaedryx spoke a single word and her vision exploded with light and warmth.

Maeve felt liquid spill against her fingers, that horrible reaction that her father had taunted her for mercilessly the few times he had allowed her a climax of her own. She knew in her heart that it was not urine, but he had always made it out to be, even forcing her to clean it from the floor with her mouth when she had displeased him, but there was none of that here. None of that in the warm lap with the woman who whispered quiet words of praise as Maeve's fingers worked every last bit of honey from herself. Only when her body no longer convulsed and quivered did she try to speak, and even then... she could not.

“A little trick I learned from the Headmistress once upon a time. Now then, one more order before I release you from the compulsion. Are you ready?” Maeve mewled her assent, and she felt Xaedryx grin. “The next person whose company you enjoy who approaches you for intimacy, you will accept. I suspect it should take roughly three weeks. In the interim, you are to return here every night for your next class. Am I clear?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Good.” The puppet-like feeling left her at that single word, and she slumped bodily back against the elven woman, who simply laughed softly. “Shall we continue?”


	7. Chapter Seven

It was cold and raining when they burst from one world into the next, and it was still raining several hours later as the lands beneath them changed from what was once the lush valleys and hills of the Wetlands into the drier and desiccated hillsides of the Foothills. Once just as lush as the surroundings, the war between the Forsaken and the rest of the races had taken a harsh toll on the land, and what was not flooded in viscous goo was either burned or dying. There would be no healing for this land. Not for a long time, if ever.

“We should have brought Reanai.” Gildedsun's voice filtered through the rune-marked tag pinned to her cloak, identical to the ones that each of the five wore. The runes glowed faintly, brightening only a fraction when a voice was picked up. It was the easiest way to speak when distance was an issue, and there was no worse time to try to communicate than when in flight.

“Aye! Between ye and tha Faun, we'd get nowhere fast except tha nearest bed. I'd 'ave preferred me beer!” The harsh rasp of their dwarven companion was accompanied by several bouts of laughter from the others, even the usually quiet Warden. The only one who did not laugh was the leader herself, her eyes focused more on the ground beneath them. She listened to the friendly taunts with only one ear, the most she needed to pick up on anything while the rune on her shoulder burned.

Her eyes trailed west, over the long forgotten roads and then to scour the far distant curving spires of the trees that completely cloaked the once proud city of Gilneas. Something tickled and pulled at her, something that sat wrong in her eyes and yet she could not quite put words to it. With a touch along his wing, Nazaku slowed his flight while the one who rode him motioned towards the dwarf. “I need your skills, Gromli. The rest of you, keep close in case of trouble.”

Their voices chirruped over the tags, and Gromli's impressive stone drake matched Nazaku's speed as the two dove for the ground, each landing lightly and crouching in near sync to allow their riders an easier dismount. Ashadel gestured to the road, an idle motion that nonetheless pulled the entire attention of the dwarf. 

“Misseh, I thin' ye 'ave somethin' 'ere! Tha tracks 'ere,” he pointed while he walked, tracing out two straight lines that flanked him, “are nothin' less than wagon treads. An' 'ere are boot marks. Nary a hoof ta be seen.” Gromli set his hands on his hips and peered up and down the road. “They go to tha trees, ma'am. Ya don' think tha wolves are free, do ye?”

“No. I think we'd know if Gilneas had reopened, though I don't see how it could after all this time.” She motioned to those flying above them, pointing down the road. “Keep an eye on the trail, Grom. This isn't one or two walking alone. There are more than a few. If we can get them to come with us, that's more people who are safe.” The two moved together to remount, and Ashadel felt the gentle touch of Nazaku on her mind, wrapping her in their bond before taking flight.

_He's fine, Rider. A little time apart may cool your frustrations with him. Better to set your eyes to the task than let your heart lead your thoughts._

“I know, Naza.” The words were meant for him alone as they took flight, his own calming her and making her realize that her mind had been far behind her, left in a quiet room with a man who seemed only half the man he had once been. “I just wish he'd let me back in.”

_Would that it was so easy, my friend. I don't believe there is anyone we know who could pull such information from him even with force. You will need patience, that is all. Your love will pull you through._

“Mmph,” was her quiet response as the flock tore down the road with Grom in the lead. There was silence now, every member of the group feeling the pulse of anticipation. It was so rare to find wanderers outside of the few remaining bastions, and rarer still to find those who had enough thought left with them to work a wagon.

Gilneas rose on their left side, the twisted trees casting an ominous scene over what was already a haunting divide. Silverpine had only just escaped the destruction, but only in small slivers of land. Ambermill and the area around it had been spared, soft green grass leading right up to the walls of the mighty city that remained hidden. The dragons were careful not to fly too close, memories of that folly radiating within all of them. Torin had been young, his drake nothing more than a child in the eyes of dragons, but the trees had swept them up and crushed them without remorse. Even now, they could still hear the screams.

“Camp. Satyr, folks.” Gromli swept downwards, leaping from his dragons back to land like a heavy, fleshy cannonball in the midst of it all. “Nothin'. Come on down, ye lot.” 

They landed, each dismounting with questioning glances given between them. That this had been a Satyr encampment was obvious; the flags still hung beside the tents of flayed skin. But the enemies they thought to find in the camp were dead, little left other than the sweeping horns and bones littering the muddied ground. There was little else than that, and it left them confused.

“Don't suppose your Knight went for a little walk a few weeks back, Ash?” The husky voice was little more than a whisper on the wind, the most that the near-mute man could bring himself to speak. His eyes, normally a pale blue that matched the sky of their new home, shone a brilliant yellow as he pushed back the black hood of his cloak. “Doesn't smell like him, but he's a slippery one.”

“No, Hoax. He would have told me that much.” While the words had the opportunity for venom, it was absent as she strode around the decaying camp, sweeping a fallen banner aside to peer at the ruins of the tent beneath. Nothing made sense, and yet the signs of multiple boot prints among those of the fallen were glaring proof that not all was as it seemed.

_Yani has found something._

The bass of the near-black netherdrake the mage rode reverberated in their minds, startling them out of their individual thoughts. In moments, the dark-skinned Draenei appeared through a thicket, pointing behind her at the coastline just barely visible. “I think,” she panted, “that they had a boat. Come look. You won't even begin to believe this.”

None of them did until they saw the remains themselves. The half-charred wreck of a small life boat lay forever still on it's side, barnacles drying in the sunlight. Beside it floated the debris from what they could only assume had been a makeshift dock. But it was the refuse that both boggled and delighted them.

Boxes were strewn across the muck, some already sunk by the endless tide, others placed too far up to fall to such damage. They were filled with items; old armor made rusty by the sea, swords and shields, and a few held broken bottles that may have once held important elixirs. Yani strode to one of the boxes and hefted a weapon, tossing it over to Hoax. His eyes widened. 

“Impossible.” He brandished it, earning the sucked in breath of the rest. “These are Vrykul make. A scramseax, if I remember right. There's no reason something like this would be so far south unless...”

“Unless we've got people up north.” Ash sighed, shaking her head. “We've considered it before, but we figured people avoided it for the same reasons we did. Was no dream of ours to be trapped between Scourge and Legion... but if some took the chance and made it out? Light, if all of Northrend ended up untouched?”

Yani fairly bounced in place, the bangles on her wrists chiming with the movements. “Oooh, may I? I've always wanted my renegade learning to come in handy, and you must admit... there is no time like this one to prove how useful it is!” Her perfect Common was barely touched by her natural accent, each word spoken crisply and audibly. It suited her, somehow. With another sigh, as if the choice was a horrible one to make, Ash nodded.

It did not take long for the portal to open. It wavered in the middle of a cloaking array, teasing them with the sight of lands they had not visited in decades. They saw the snow-capped mountains, and pulled heavier cloaks from inside their bags in preparation for the cold. “When we're through, take to the air immediately. We're going to find out how this is, and see about getting ourselves as close to survivors as we can. My guess is that they'll have headed for the coast if they're using boats, and frankly... the Hills are likely the closest to where we're going to be dropped. Yani, save the excited giggling for when we're through, would you? It's creepy.”

Nazaku flared his wings, rearing and bolting for the portal. Her breath sucked from her, Ash felt as though she were being pulled through a straw, the spinning colors of the Nether constricting around her until they exploded into frigid blue. The dragon careened into a snowbank, and was promptly joined by the other four in no less graceful manners. Yani's laugh split the tension they all felt, and after making certain they had sustained no injuries, they took flight.

Dragonblight spread out beneath them, as silent as it had ever been. Rolling white plains of snow were all that could be seen as far as the eye could go, save for the spire of dusky gold that all recognized as the conclave for the dragons. Without warning, the massive red that Gildedsun rode tore for the tower, which looked deserted from where they currently were.

“Tria! Pull him -”

_It is his hatchery, Ashadel. The last place he recalls seeing his mother. Allow him his grief._

Her mood tempered, she motioned for the rest to fall in after the racing dragon, easily able to catch up to him as he landed on the uppermost floor, which contained little more than the large orb and several drifts of snow. Tria had dismounted, wrapping arms around the neck of the dragon as his head lowered to the stone and he simply became immobile. Hopeful, Ashadel met eyes with the Warden, only to receive a shake of the head.

In the near sixty years that the Warden had paired with the red dragon, never once had she heard a voice. It seemed that even now, the dragon would keep his grief utterly silent, though the area around them thrummed with the gentle humming of each of the others; Ashadel and Yani's netherdrakes, Gromli's stone drake, and the oil-spill colored night hawk that Hoax had brought under his control on the new world.

In time, the dragon stood and allowed Tria to pull herself back up into the saddle, and the five took off into the air, pulling towards the coast in a silent group of mourning.

_Dragons approach from the west. Five. One, I do not recognize. It is alien... of different magic._

Siphron's polite monotone cut through his idle daydreams, and he paused to listen for more from the dragon. When nothing came, the man reached a hand out, pressing a large palm against the thick rump of the woman perched delicately on the edge of his desk. With an outraged yelp, the blonde toppled to the floor bodily, cursing his name while he stood and donned a simple shirt. As usual, he ignored the words as he moved through the room; the cloak for warmth, the two-handed blade strapped over it, the dagger attached neatly to his hip in case there was no time to pull the massive weapon from it's sheath.

_They are not dead. There is our magic in one. She would taste delicious._

He pulled his arm from Vanessa's grip as the buxom, full-figured woman attached herself to her perceived rightful place and pushed open the door of the single floor building that he called home. As home as it ever could be, with little more than the main room that served as a glorified office, and two side rooms; both bedrooms. Roughly peeled off on the door frame, the blonde grumbled, flouncing pretty curls and following after the man as he made his way to the plaza where Siphron's massive black and purple body was curled, taking in the sunlight.

Along the western walls of the town, bowmen stood waiting for the first sign of the mentioned newcomers, the trees providing considerable cover for anything above ground. There was no silence – the dragon's warning had been spoken to the entire town, and now there was a state of disarray not unlike the same that they had encountered when they had realized the Scourge were no longer an offensive legion. Mothers pulled children tight to their skirts, while the men puffed their chests and tried not to look as though the thought of the unknown terrified them.

Vanessa approached his side, arms folded over the scant cloth that only barely kept her hefty bust within the tight confines. She was a soft, plush figure next to the wire and muscle that he had become, and several men in the camp would have given their legs and arms to have spent even a night beneath those firm thighs, tended by the thick lips which were commonly caught between her teeth in pouts and thoughtful expressions. Vanessa knew this, and flaunted her body in outfits of skintight leather leggings and knee-high boots, thin shirts tied between her breasts and long necklaces that dipped between the swell of warm flesh.

_They have passed the first perimeter with no altercation. The second is letting them through as well. They should be within sight in the next three minutes._

“Dragons?” Vanessa flipped blonde curls over her shoulder, a slender hand propped on one curved hip and peered up at the face of the red-head beside her. Full lips twisted into a pout, and she blew the remaining silky gold from her eyes and stalked down to a group of women and girls holding the chains and collars of fierce hunting hounds. He watched her go, ice blue eyes searing beneath the hood before they dimmed and returned to the skyline.

_I am guiding them. I would recommend clearing the plaza._

Children squealed as the twilight dragon stood, several clinging to the spines along his back as he slunk to the outside edge of the circular platform, wood creaking as talons dug into the hard material. One wing extended, and the children slid one by one down the membrane and into their caretaker's open arms, shuttled off to safety beneath the eaves of the long homes. Shouts went up as the first of the newcomers appeared over the trees.

The stocky dragon that landed was of dark stone shot through with veins of gold, and proved it's weight as it landed heavily on the plaza, causing the structure to creak and groan. The dwarf that appeared on the ground beside it was just as stocky, his black hair and beard grizzled, held fast with small rings of gold. His skin was tanned, and he walked with the shuffling waddle of someone who had perhaps been riding for too long. A meaty hand reached, grabbing the decorative faceplate that his the eyes of the strong-jawed dragon from the sun and surroundings. 

The red landed next, snapping jaws at the nearness of Siphron, tail thrashing with agitation. The rider slid from it's back, laying a consoling hand on the mighty flank, and it quieted. The rider's cloak hid most of her from view, but there was no mistaking the two-handed sword on her back was not made for decoration. Red hair trailed from beneath the cloak hood, and several men took in a sharp breath as she pushed the heavy cloth back. Her features were stern, her gaze careful on those who observed her eagerly, and she moved with grace to make way for the others.

The third was the strange one, not quite dragon and not quite wolf. Half of the animal was little more than small ebon scales that glimmered like oil on dark water, over the form of what most certainly was at least largely dragon-like along the back end. The front of the beast was the same dark coloring, but where one might have pictured the rest of a dragon or even a raptor-like bird, it was instead the large visage of a wolf with thick black fur. The membrane wings of a dragon stretched wide from it's back then tucked neatly to allow it's rider down.

The beast caused the most reaction, several unsure of the fluid-like gait it gained on the ground, avoiding the thick tail that rattled with loose scales as it moved, sniffing out the new scents of the area before it sat and watched those who watched it. Throwing his hood back, the man who rode the beast was as much a beast himself in size. His dark armor and hair were matched, black as night and so true that the light cast blue into the dark strands. His eyes flared gold, and while the weapons on his hip were easily seen as his hands swept his cloak back, the talon-like nails were a clearer warning of his hidden nature.

While the crowd admired the strange beast and it's solemn companion, the final two drakes dropped. Light and nimble compared to the stone drake, the netherdrakes were easily the most flashy with their colorful leather hides. Their appearance drew little attention other than the awe that they were there, and few cast the Draenei who stepped out of the shadow of the dark-skinned netherdrake's wings more than the most cursory glance. Her dark robes and dark skin matched her dark hair, only the silver-white of her eyes offering any true color. Beside her, the cloaked form of the final rider appeared, murmuring quietly to the much taller woman.

“I 'ave two questions for ye,” the dwarf shouted over the murmurs of the crowd, settling thick hands on his belt while he rocked from heel to toe. “Tha first is easy. Are ye all dead?” The general silence burst into timid giggles and laughter, and his grin grew broad. “Alrigh' then. Tha second question! Do ye,” he closed an eye and scrutinized the nearest children creeping closer, “'ave any beer?” Several dwarves in the crowd shouted their confirmation, and with a sudden rush of movement, they were surrounded.

“Easy, easy.” Hoax laid a hand on the furred shoulder of his beast as people crowded close and tried to touch the silky fur and glossy scales. The beast shifted, uncomfortable with such numbers, and the uneasiness was matched by his rider. “You, yes you. Is there a leader here? Someone we can talk to about... this?”

Vanessa paused in her reaching, sucking her succulent lip for a moment while looking the lean man over. A devious grin tugged at her lips, and she withdrew the hand to join her arms as they tucked beneath her breasts, straining the fabric of her shirt dangerously. “Of course,” she purred. “I can help you.” Her look soured as his eyes narrowed, and her cheeks puffed. A single hand flicked dismissively towards the unmoving shape of the red-head who still watched them. “Or you can talk to him, whichever. I assure you, I'm... far more pleasant company.”

“I'm sure you are, darlin'. But I'm no fan of the easy sort of company. I'm sure you understand.” The tall man slid through the crowd with ease, leaving Vanessa stunned beside the beast that now seemed to laugh at her. Insulted and yet considerably intrigued, she watched him take the arm of the final figure, still cloaked, and direct them through the crowd. The red-headed woman followed them both, though the draenei and dwarf seemed far too interested in speaking to those of the town. The group peeled themselves away, following her Commander into his home.

She allowed them several minutes together, expecting the sound of Siphron within her mind, the sound of her leader summoning her to his side, but both dragon and man remained stubbornly silent. Grumbling, she shoved her way through the crowd, breaking out of the swarm of bodies with a stumble. Casting a quick glance around to make sure none had seen her, she found herself insulted regardless as none offered to help her. With a huff, she began striding to the home, opening the door and slipping inside in time to hear her leader speak.

“I'm afraid you've caught us on a bit of a rough week, friends.” The man sat in his chair, boots up on the desk as he reclined with hands behind his head, watching the three. “We weren't expecting any company, and we aren't exactly equipped to serve the needs of dragons and... flying lizard-wolves.” He motioned towards her, and with a grin she slipped past them, her ample breasts pressing on Hoax's arm as she moved. Her joy was great until she noticed that his eyes, now a pale blue, were focused on the room instead of her. With a huff, she settled on a box just behind the Knight, glowering at Hoax.

“Your town is surrounded by several lines of Scourge. Yet, it seemed we were more the threat than they.” Tria spoke, her brows furrowed. “We expected to find smoldering ruins or walking corpses, not a flesh-and-blood town in the wilds of the Hills.”

Marric smirked, though it hardly touched his eyes. “We thought the same, when we were first building in this area. Just a handful of people, terrified of a world that had been set to flame? We slaughtered several walking dead before we realized that they never attacked. We thought them to be shambling errors left behind after the war... but no matter how many we slew, they never attacked. In fact, they started leaving rations and tools, building materials... we'd have died without those supplies. Now? They stay out there and act as a first defense.”

“That doesn't make sense. The Scourge are a mindless death machine, and yet you allow them to live as if they have emotions. Feelings?” Tria's words made the man rigid, and Vanessa smirked triumphantly as she leaned forward to rest her hand on Marric's shoulder, stroking his skin like he was a precious cat.

Marric's eyes flared, and the female Knight seemed to withdraw her words, bowing her head. When he spoke again, his tone was laced with ice. “I'm perfectly aware of what the Scourge are, my lady. Likely far more intimately than you are aware, yourself.” His eyes simmered and then dimmed. “But what they were is not what they are: perfect soldiers against the Legion, and no real threat to us. Not once in fifty years has anyone been wounded. Frightened? Certainly. Not wounded. Now, I would have your names.” His eyes fell on the still-cloaked figure, but it was the man who spoke first.

“Lorcan Hoax, Neutralizer for the Grey Riders, and resident Nighthawk tamer. When they choose to be such.” The man's eyes flicked briefly to Vanessa, and she preened herself for but a moment before his gaze flicked away and did not return.

“Triadae Gildedsun, Warden Commander and Combat Arts instructor for the Lunarspell Academy.” The red-headed woman bowed stiffly, then straightened. Her eyes went to the last of them, who still remained quiet, their face unseen within the depths of the cloak. With a sigh, Marric made to speak, silenced as a slender hand left the cloak to push back the hood.

“I hardly think,” the woman spoke with a husky tone, her green eyes flashing briefly as she shook out golden hair, “that I need to introduce myself to you, old friend.”

Beneath Vanessa's hand, Marric had gone rigid in a manner she had not seen for a long time. Surprise etched his features and lit his eyes, and his voice was barely heard as he murmured a single word. “Impossible.”

“For the sake of completion, we'll go through the motions. My name is Ashadel Faun'aer, once of House Sungleam. I am the leader of the Grey Riders and groundskeeper of the Lunarspell Academy and outlying lands. The dwarven man is Gromli Deepcut of the Mountain Guild, and Yani of Draenor finishes up our company. Do I need to name our mounts, as well?” There was no answer, and she took a breath before continuing, her voice restrained and level. “And you, Mallac Brightstar, are a git for not recognizing Nazaku the moment you saw him.”

“Impossible,” he muttered again, pushing himself to his feet and ignoring the startled grunt of the voluptuous woman at his side, who was already leveling a dangerously jealous glare on the slimmer blonde. “Prove it. Something no one else could have or would say... only then...”

He caught sight of the intricate blades on her hips, and his heart lurched. Replicating those blades was impossible, but they had been stolen before. The simple collar around her neck was easily mimicked by even the most untalented of metalsmiths. He watched her remove her cloak and toss it on the simple wooden couch beneath the window, her fingers going to unlace her vest. Perhaps he had expected several things, but the woman before him doing little more than flashing her perky breasts at him caught him utterly by surprise for a few moments. Clearing his head, he jerked a thumb at Vanessa. “I see hers all the time. That doesn't really -”

“You can't have them,” she spoke simply.

“By the Light.” Vanessa's yelp of pain as his chair slammed back against her leg was unheard over the stomp of the boots he wore as he near vaulted the desk to pull the brazen woman to him in a crushing hug. “Only you could make that work, you horrible woman. I thought you were dead. I thought the lot of you were dead.”

There was laughter and tears, and Vanessa felt herself growing both sick and hot with jealousy as her Commander clung to the elven woman as if she were a final support amidst a rolling sea of emotions. Propping her chin in her palm, she grumbled inwardly while the reunited friends gushed sickeningly.

“Vanessa.” 

The woman hopped up quickly, her breasts nearly popping from her shirt with the motion. “Take Mr. Hoax and the Commander to our finest lodge, and bring their companions. I wish to have some time alone with my wayward friend. See to their every need, no matter the cost. Send the hounds out, if we need more meat. Show their mounts to the choicest feeding spots. Everything.”

His eyes went back to Ashadel's as he cupped her face in his hands, completely missing the scathing glare from Vanessa as she led the other two out with a mild limp to her otherwise hip-heavy gait. His hands combed through her hair, ruining the tight braid she wore for travel and tracing over the thin scars on her cheek and neck. “Fifty years, Ashadel. You couldn't have sent a letter? Anything?”

She laughed, the words of her tale spilling easily from her lips. Recounting the years took hours, fielding his questions as they came up until at last she was left with little else to say. Excitement burned in her blood, and she paced the room like a caged lioness while he sat astride his chair, chin propped on the back. “We can take you back. Everyone here can be taken there. It's a safe world. Safer than here with the undead lurking just moments away. Your wife and daughter would love I – Mallac?”

Her excitement dulled at the look of pain that came across his face, his knuckles white from his grip on the chair. Unable to hold her eyes, his forehead pressed to the chair as he sought to steady the mind that reeled with amazement, and now the pain of a wound reopened. One that had never fully healed. She understood, and her steps took her to his side where she dropped to her knees beside his chair.

“Mal... I'm so sorry. I didn't know. I had thought, I had hoped...” No words seemed right, and the fifty years that had separated them suddenly felt like a chasm that neither could cross.

“The Legion that day.” He raised his head, his voice strained raw with the pain of the memories. “They brought down Lyre first. Grabbed her up and ripped claws down her body. She didn't even have the chance to scream, Ash. My precious daughter, and I could do nothing. “I can help,” she had said. “I'm just as strong as you,” she told us. She was, Ash. She was so very strong, but you can't heal death. They didn't even give her the chance. It drove Temis mad. One moment we were fighting together, with her entire wolf pack tearing demons to shreds and the next...

“... the next was just the sword through her breast. Just like Lyre, she was forgotten. A wave of bodies, a mass of corpses and the living fighting to remain that way. I got to her in time to watch the last light leave her, to feel the last pulse. The dead buried me and my girls.” He drew in a ragged breath, and her hand wiped gently at the tears that had fallen down his chiseled face. “I don't know why I was left. It was the only time I'd ever considered raising someone, Ash. The urge was so strong, just to bring her back. So I wouldn't be alone, but...

“She would have hated me. Everything about her was always so full of life, and I just couldn't do that to her. But I had lost everything... when the demons left, the survivors banded together, buried what we could recognize, and then we fled from there. We came here, and for the last fifty years, we've pulled others to us. Every few months we head back to the main continents and pull anyone we can find to safety, here. There are no demons... that is one thing the Scourge has done.

“It should be a blessing, but we're... I could never bring myself to replace them, Ash. I poured everything of myself into loving my family, and they're all gone. My wife, my daughter, and my son.” Defeated, he hid his face in his hands, missing the sudden gleam of surprise in the eyes of his friend. Her voice mirrored the joy that flooded her. 

“Mallac, you are not alone.” Her mind flashed to the heated springs where her students bathed, the the head of green hair that her hand pressed upon, the pale violet skin and the look of surprise in Elune-touched eyes as she dunked the young man, and the laughter that filled the cavern as he came up sputtering for air. “Your son is alive,” she breathed, shaking his arm until his mind registered her words and his eyes fixed on her in blank shock.

“I took him through myself, Mal. He's been one of my wards all this time, and I swear to you he is healthy and happy. A man you would be proud of. I can take you to him, if you'll come with me. I can take all of you to someplace so much better if you'll allow me.” Her voice turned soft, desperation and happiness flooding with hope. Gentle finger slid to turn his head towards her, and she murmured the words again as if he had simply been stunned silent.

His speed was breathtaking. Her mind registered kneeling beside him and then pain as her head connected roughly against the wall. His body pressed against hers, mouth searching and then claiming, muffling the weak protests she tried to form as his hands gripped at her slender waist. From the wall he pulled her to him, all but throwing her atop the desk where she fell to prop on her elbows, her breathing matching his own ragged panting.

They eyed one another, each hanging onto the edge of a cliff they'd long ago resolved never to tread again. She the dancing light he could never quite grasp, and he the stalwart protector she had cut free to find a better and more rewarding joy than the empty life she would have given him. Their bodies trembled, and she could still feel the numb pain from how hard his lips had crushed against her own. With a growl, she sat up, grabbing at the collar of his shirt.

The thin cloth tore like tissue beneath her grasp, and his hard body followed it smoothly. Her hands moved over his shoulders and up his neck, fingers burying themselves in his crimson hair, and as their lips joined again in a crushing kiss, she led them over the edge, letting the fire of need consume them both as they fell.


	8. Chapter Eight

In all the years since she had begun to dive into the carnal, she had learned the difference between love and sex. She knew the difference between passion and need. She knew the ache of love without intimacy, and knew the pain of emptiness in what should have been something wonderful. For years, the carnal and devious had just been something to do to relieve boredom when there was nothing else to do. It was empty, and in using it to relieve boredom, it had become boring in itself. Sex without love was simply sex, and the act of putting one and one together had long since had the result of just leaving two people to roll out of bed and get on with their lives.

He caught her bottom lip between his teeth, scraping the flesh as she growled hungrily, her hands jerking the fabric of his shirt until she could slide it off of his shoulders, tipping her head back while his mouth quested along her neck and down to her collarbone. She felt his teeth before his tongue, pulling a soft gasp from her with how sharp he bit the skin before rolling it beneath his tongue, tasting her. Devouring her. Her hands quested along his shoulders, and he roughly shrugged them off as he dipped lower, alternating sharp nips with fast suckles over her breasts and down her stomach.

Her growls turned to gasps, sounds of yearning as his tongue pressed roughly against her folds, warming the leathers that concealed her away from him, and her mind flashed to their first time together; slow, passionate, and everything that this was not. She fell back against the wood of the desk, hands slipping over her face to tangle in her hair, leaving her gnawing in frustration at the heel of her hand as his tongue was replaced by his thumb, grinding mercilessly against her clit as his other hand pulled at the laces of her boots.

A harsh jerk made her hands drop, gripping the desk tightly as the jerk was duplicated and then her boot was off, the other one following with just as much force. She heard it collide with something, tumbling to the floor with a crash as half the light in the room flared out with the noisy death of the lantern. Neither gave much care, Marric's mouth finding hers again as he slid his hands into the waist of her leggings, pushing them down as if they were made of little more than linen. She helped with squirms and rolls of her hips, pulling her knees to her chest as the last of the leather was removed.

As he pulled her to him, sliding his hands up her back, she shrugged the leather vest off and uttered a soft squeal when one arm scooped under her ass to pick her up. She found his mouth, linking her legs around his hips to steady herself as he carried her from the desk into a darkened hall. Her back met wood, a grunt muffled in their kiss that quickly turned into a growl of frustration on his end as he struggled with the doorknob. Her laugh was breathy as squished as she was against the door, and she slapped his hand away to open it herself, yelping as the door slammed open behind her and she was tossed on top of a broad bed covered with soft furs.

Marric paused long enough to close the door and tear the last bits of clothing from himself, and then he was on the bed and over her, his chest pressed firmly to her back while a hand slipped around her hips to pull her tight against him. She mewled as his fingers slipped between her folds and then within just long enough to send her body humming, and as his lips pressed against her neck, he shoved himself within her, tearing groans from the both of them.

Ashadel knew lust, and she knew passion. Marric surrounded her in both, his skin never once leaving her as he drove them both towards an end that she felt not only as bliss as the waves of pleasure crashed upon her, but as pain as his teeth drove into her shoulder with a groan as his length hilted itself and he spilled within her, fingers covering her mouth to muffle the hoarse cry of his name. She let go, allowing him to guide her to the bed before he collapsed, and they fell into exhausted sleep. She barely noticed the tears on her cheeks so much as the painful knowledge that it was the first time in several decades where she had felt anything in the aftermath.

It was dark when she woke, the lamps she remembered being lit in the room now completely out, sending the room into nothing less than a quiet den of seclusion. The thought made her ache, remembering the equally secluded home that her friend had shared with his wife and children. The home he could no longer return to, even if it existed. Nestled against his side, her lips touched gently against his skin, drawing a soft murmur from him and a gentle squeeze of his arm around her in a brief hug. 

She faded, dancing somewhere between sleep and waking for several minutes until a soft knock on the door heralded soft speech between the man and a new voice, feminine in nature. The room began to lighten as the girl moved about the room, relighting dark lanterns until there was a pause.

“Oh, bloody hell. You gave in to her charms an' fucked her. Get up, you'll have to go to the infirmary. If we're quick, you won't have caught anything.”

While Marric chuckled, Ashadel twitched an ear and moved her head, finding it difficult. Marric's hand moved, freeing her strands from the grasp of the young woman, who jumped back as Ashadel sat up.

“Oi!”

For a moment, the two peered at each other in quiet contemplation. The woman was darker skinned, too smooth a coloring to speak of a tan and reminding the rogue of something like chocolate mixed with milk. Her eyes were a striking amber, almond-shaped and slightly slanted, and the mass of black curled tucked behind one slightly pointed ear proved the reason more than the quick glance at her body. There was something painfully familiar in the eyes that looked back at her, but she could no more find the connection than she could find the right words to say. The girl found them instead, her prettily exotic features shifting into greater surprise as her eyes found the collar around Ashadel's neck.

“That's... that's the collar.” Her eyes shot to Marric, who was sitting up in the bed, as her hands moved to touch Ashadel's hair. “This is her? That's impossible. You said it was impossible! You said she died!” The woman's voice was becoming higher pitched in excitement as she looked between the two, and Ashadel peered at Marric from beneath mussed hair in question. To her own surprise, he seemed to have gone paler, a guilty look flashing on his features. “You said she died. Oh my. The blades... I thought they were just pretty daggers. I wondered where Vanessa – oh my. I have to tell mother.”

Marric paled even further as the girl fled from the room, standing quickly and pulling his pants on as he called after her and vanished out after her. Left on her own, Ashadel left the bed and found a spare shirt, pulling it on despite the look she gave at the plaid pattern. Groggy from sleep and sore from what anyone could have considered an attack given Marric's ferocity, she followed them into the hallway, only to find Marric holding the woman by her shoulders, speaking in low tones despite the woman's climbing frustration.

“How could you not have told her? She has a right!”

“Katja, I'm not saying you're wrong, but your mother isn't stable. This could tear her the rest of the way down. She could become impossible to control, and I can't risk that. No matter what. I won't take your mother from you, Katja. Not after everything you both went through to survive.”

Katja's anger dimmed, and Ash recognized tears brimming in the thickly lashed eyes that looked to her as if pleading. Glancing back at Marric, the girl's stubborn posture deflated, and she nodded. “It's not fair to hide it. Do you know how much I dreamed of this day? After every single minute of hell we went through, how much I hoped that what I heard was true? This could be what helps her, not what harms her. I need to know, too. I've asked nothing of you in all these years. Give me that. Please.”

Several seconds passed before Marric released her and nodded, and Katja cast one more glance to Ashadel before disappearing into the room further down the hall. Confused, Ashadel opened her mouth to ask as Marric approached her, stepping behind and wrapping his arms around her. 

“I should have told you sooner. Consider this a thank you for keeping my son safe all of these years.”

Katja reappeared again, her hand closed around a piece of crimson cloth stretched tight around an object as long as her forearm. The cloth was lumpy, and Ashadel couldn't help but look confused as the girl held the item out to her. With some urging from Marric, she turned the cloth over in her hands and peeled it open, her breath catch in her throat as the hiss of metal on metal assaulted her ears and she felt something light drop into her palm.

A strangled cry, a moan of disbelief tangled in pain, left her as she turned the item in her palm, and she felt her knees go weak. It was a simple stone, hardly worth mention to anyone who didn't know what it truly was. The design etched on it, normally flaring a brilliant blue was dead, nothing more than scratches on stone, but Ashadel would have recognized the design she had carved herself decades ago. A modified hearthstone, the item opened a direct link to a matching rune deep in the halls of her hidden home, long since abandoned. There were only three in existence, and she knew where two of them were.

Marric eased her to the ground as she kept the item cupped in her hands, brushing her thumb over the bit of stone as if that might bring it back to life. “Only two people had these,” she explained in a rough voice. “Both of them were students of mine, and I considered them my children, as they were as close and dear to me as any could ever be. They brought me so much joy in everything that they did... and my heart broke in two when one was lost to me. This would allow them access into the home I kept hidden away...”

“Please,” Katja knelt in front of her, picking up the second item and holding it towards her. “Did you give one of them this, as well? Is this your blade?”

Ashadel's fingers touched on the leather hilt, feeling along the decorative silver filigree that pinned it in place. Through her tears, she examined it. A delicate blade meant to be concealed; a killing blade known best to some as a misericorde. She shook her head slowly. “No, it's not mine. The blades I used were made differently to conceal the toxins I worked with, and were never so thin. This was used to provide a deathblow, small enough to go into the joints of plate armor. I had no need of it – none of my victims tended to wear plate, let alone anything. I don't... know -” 

Her fingers grazed over the pommel of the blade, touching on the flat top that bore a relief of sorts. Lifting the item to let light hit it, she felt her skin pale. Flanked by silver design, the letter “H” stood out stark against the shining metal. Her throat dry, she lowered the item and pushed herself to her feet, gathering up the cloth. Without another word to the two, she stormed from the house, breaking into a run until she hit the plaza, now emptied save for the relaxing dragons and Hoax, who turned to look her over appreciatively.

Until she stormed to him, one finger held up accusingly. “You told me when you found me that you had been sent by an old friend. When I took you and yours under my employment, I demanded that there be no lies between us. You could lie to anyone else that you deemed fit, but you were not to lie to me.”

“Love,” his hand lifted, attempting to push her own away, “I never once lied to you. A mutual associate of ours sent me to you when our contract expired. I'm a man of my word, even when the deal seems a little shaky. Our contract,” he gestured between them, “said we would have nothing but honesty between us. You just never asked a good deal of the questions other employers might have asked, which is your mistake an' none of mine.” He growled, snapping at her finger when she refused to pull it away.

“Much as I might have fancied the thought of you slippin' into my sheets wearin' even less than what you wear now, lass? I don't like bein' accused.” His accent, long hidden by a general lack of desire to speak, slipped out in his rising anger, claws visible as pale blue eyes turned gold. “If it's our deal you want to be breakin', then say so. But don't you dare make it sound as if I'm the one who came to you waving the red flags.”

She paused, chewing her words until she knew she could keep her voice level. “How did your last contract end?”

“Same as ours is fit to, when it happens. My employer died. As part of our contract and in the event of their death, I was to seek you out and find employment under you, by force if I had to.” His eyes narrowed. “I was under the impression, given the seriousness of the request, that I was to act as a guard for you until the day your expired.”

“Who was your contract with?”

His eyes softened, glinting gold becoming amber for a moment's time. Long enough for her throat to completely dry, her heartbeat thundering in her ears as they returned to the shade of blue she was familiar with when he was not angered or sensing. “I'm not allowed to say, as befits the same request as finding you. I was allowed to tell you that it was a mutual acquaintance, and that was all.”

She watched his eyes rivet to the cloth as she brought her other hand up, revealing the hilt of the small dagger. The man stood frozen, locked entirely to the glimmering letter on the pommel. Transfixed, his hand swept aside the cloak he wore, pulling one of the larger swords out from it's sheath to bring it to his eye. There on the pommel, as was true for all the weapons he crafted himself, was the “H” that marked his work, utterly identical to the one on the dagger she held.

“You came to me several months after the fall of Stormwind.” No more than a whisper between them, her voice remained steady despite the desire she had to fall to her knees. “I never asked for more information than I needed because I was recovering from a loss so deep that I thought I would never be whole again. I never questioned that you knew exactly the right thing to say no matter what I asked. I thought it was your charm. I thought it was your wit. The control, all of it. I never thought, for even a moment, that you had been close to someone...”

“I trained her,” he replied hoarsely, reaching for the dagger and taking it. “I was also the one that kidnapped her just after Theramore's fall. Caught her out in the Barrens, and she put up quite the fight. Took down my strongest man... an orc nearly twice her size. All the time she was with us, she never stopped talking about you or that man of hers. I fell for her in that time. I'm a man of urges, and I swear that I had moments I wanted nothing more than to sink my teeth into her and take her until she was mine, but she was so loyal and such a fiery spirit that I couldn't bring myself to do it.

“I let her go, instead. We crashed on Pandaria on the way to an arena, and I let her go. Told her to find that man she loved and get married. Hide herself away, change everything about herself so they'd never catch her again. Change herself, so I'd forget her. But,” his hands closed around the hilt of the dagger, “you never quite forget someone like her. I tried. I tried every damned thing I could to get her out of my head, and it worked for a while, or so I thought.

“I saw her again, several years later, after Dalaran fell. She had just buried that man of hers, and you never saw someone so beaten. I couldn't help it. I swept her up in an attempt to save her, tried to bring some light back into her life. Over the years, I thought it might have worked, but she was never as close to me as she had been back in the Ring. One day, we were training, and something snapped inside of her. Short shit, but she knew how to bring someone down. She was as fierce a lover as she was a fighter, demanding everything of me. Right there in the middle of that damned training ring, everything broke.

“What she wanted of me, I gave her. It was fast and bloody every time it happened, and it happened often. She had a horrible penchant for public places, places we knew we could get caught easily, but nothing stopped her. It scared me.” His eyes flicked to hers, and he managed a weak chuckle. “Only time I've ever been scared of someone, and it was the woman I loved more than anything I'd ever coveted, but she wasn't mine. Not until one night just before the attack on Stormwind.

“She'd always been beautiful to me. With all the death, the childish innocence had been beaten out of her, and what was left was this goddess... but never was she more beautiful than that night. I found her weeping in the shower, and when I went to join her, she begged me to stay. I was bewitched, what more can I say? I remember every breath, every touch. I remember how cold that damned water was, and how warm her body was against mine.

“I remember that kiss. The way it seemed like she was sucking my very soul out and yet giving me back a piece of her. I remember the exact tone in her voice, the way her nails dug into my arms as she pulled me to her and begged me to love her. I remember the way her eyes lit up, how they glimmered behind tears, when I held her chin and told her that she was a fool for not knowing that I always had. That was the night I learned the difference between love and sex. A difference you told me that I could never understand, if you recall. I told you that you were wrong, but you didn't believe me.

“Every cry from her, I took and stowed in my mind. Every whisper of my name, every plea. I can still tell you exactly how the sweat ran between her breasts, how the moonlight shone off of her as she writhed under me on the bed. All those other moments had been so fast, so fierce, so forgettable... but I could never forget the moment she finally became mine. She went so far as to let me free, fully accepting the change I had always held back with her. It always hurt, fighting back the beast with so much adrenaline... but she allowed it, relished it, claimed it when I changed. The sound she made when I knotted her was the sweetest sound, second only to the whispered confession just before she fell asleep.

“That was our last moment together, though I'd have given my soul to the Legion itself to have many more. In the battle for Stormwind, she lost her blades and I gave her one of mine, knowing she would do just as well with it as she'd always done with two. We were separated when the building we were in exploded. No body was ever found, so I...” He paused, finally growling as he clutched the dagger. “I searched that damned city for weeks, picking apart every building I could. I looked for her until there just was no place left to look, and then I looked more. When I finally accepted the fact that she was dead?

“I looked for you, just like she asked me to. I was determined to do that much for her.” He hung his head, ignoring her delicate fingers sweeping through the black waves of his hair. “If I ever lied, it was just by omission. I couldn't bring her name to my lips, lest you see the way my heart bled. Now you have the blade I gave her, I know it's the same one... and there's no way that blade could have made it here without help.”

There was nothing beautiful about his change. It was not like those of the druids, where their skin seemed to simply melt and change like liquid flowing over rocks. It was frightening, and she knew that newly changed worgen rarely made the change soundlessly. Lorcan did, his swords clattering to the ground as his already large but lean form grew past even the height of a bull tauren. Midnight-black fur covered him, amber-gold eyes watching her as his lips curled in the vestiges of a snarl that was all that remained of the pain of the change. Delicately, he plucked the cloth from her and held it to his snout, breathing deep.

Ashadel had no heart to stop him as he dropped the cloth and ran with a burst of speed that even she could not match without the help of her most powerful runes. The walls meant nothing to him, climbing the wood and bounding out over the perimeter, leaving the sentries posted shocked and shouting to each other. Marric appeared, handing off her boots and pants to her, and she redressed quickly.

“Where did he go? Don't tell me... he's going to run smack into Katja. She left when you did, crying. Thought you hated her – oof!” He grunted as she pulled him towards the nighthawk, making the animal growl until she laid a hand on his muzzle. The beast calmed, accepting her up onto it's back, taking Marric's additional weight with a little less grace. Regardless, the animal burst to the sky easily, circling once around the town and then after the worgen.

“Where did you find her?”

“Feralas.” Marric settled into the easy flight of the nighthawk, arms wrapped loosely around her waist as he leaned forward to be heard over the rushing wind. “Actually, we found Katja first, and only because she damned near took my head off. Kalimdor barely exists at all. Something went mad there, Ash. The trees are wild, the whole place is like stepping into your deepest fear. We managed to convince Katja that we were real, and she took us to her.”

The nighthawk dipped, and Marric's grip squeezed her painfully tight until the beast leveled out again, following the running form of Katja. “I recognized her right off the bat. She wasn't in the greatest shape, so we brought her back with us. Far as I could tell, she'd been in that place for years. Katja was nearly full grown, and as wild as they could possibly come. We keep her out here because she's too dangerous. There's only a sliver of sanity left, Ash. I would have told you, otherwise. I swear it.”

The nighthawk dove again, wings flaring as it landed delicately, just in time to see Hoax and Katja in the midst of a standoff before he pushed by her, shoving her out of his way hard enough that she hit the ground and did not move again. Hissing a curse beneath his breath, Marric slipped off the beast and jogged to the still woman, drawing her into his arms. Blood leaked from a small cut on her brow, but she was otherwise unharmed. Ashadel paced past him, motioning for him to follow.

Lorcan had paused, his massive form trembling as if afraid. Peering past him, Ashadel saw a single figure perched on a rock, dressed in a simple gown of pale lavender with a grey-blue corset. Hair as black as night curled over one shoulder and spilled past her knees, atop which her hands were folded delicately. Her eyes were covered by a cloth that matched the dress she wore, tied behind her head to tangle the ends in that cascade of black hair. She sat unassuming, ethereally beautiful in her simplicity there on the rock.

Katja roused with a groan, biting back a question as Marric requested silence, though it became apparent that she wanted nothing more than to leap to the woman's defense as soon as she saw the worgen there. Ashadel's hand touched on her arm, meeting her eyes briefly, communicating more than ever could be spoken, and the girl stilled. 

A field of death could have been no more quiet as Lorcan stepped close to the woman, dropping to his knees in front of her. From where they stood, they heard her voice as if it was within their minds as much as within their ears, and it set Ashadel's hair on end, her stomach roiling.

“You're not my Katja, stranger. For what reason have you come to see an old woman lost in her thoughts and dreams?” Her head tilted, hand lifting to unerringly press to Lorcan's own as he lifted it to touch her face. “A man, then? That's not the hand of my rescuer, not unless he's decided to become a walking hound. Come now, stranger. You have no need to hide from me.” Her head straightened as Lorcan's shape changed, pressing his human palm against her own fiercely.

“Ellie.”

His one choked word sent the very wood itself into action, the trees groaning as if wind pushed at them. The grass hissed beneath their feet, and for a moment, Ashadel was sure that the earth itself would warp beneath her feet. Beside her, Katja squirmed until Marric dropped her to her feet, but it was the rogue who grabbed her again, holding her tightly as their world lurched around them frighteningly, then straightened.

“Let me go, please! She'll kill him!”

“No,” Ashadel murmured, her grip tightening painfully on Katja's arm until the girl was near sobbing. “If there's even the barest hope for your mother to come back from what has caught hold of her, it will be your father that starts it.” The girl froze, staring at her as if she had gone mad, and Ash could only give her a sad smile. “It's your eyes, Katja. Her eyes, if only in the shape. It's been so long since I'd thought of her, it took me some time to see it, but I know it now. I knew her first love in a way that no mother, even one only in name, should know their daughter's lover. I also know he died before he could give her a child. 

“Not Hoax. I know my Ellie, and there's no way she would dance from man to man. Hoax had to fight for her, but she had always cared for him. That she gave herself to him comes as no surprise, and it is that spark that needs to be called on. In madness, especially this madness, one only needs to find the one thing that will pull them through it. I can't do it, no matter how much I wish I could. But he can, not only because he loves her and she loves him, but because he gave her the one thing she has fought to live for. You.”

Her eyes snapped closed as the world twisted around them again, and then it was still. There were no groaning trees, no hissing grass, no threats to their perceptions, merely still silence, and then his voice again.

“Please, Ellie.” Her hand dropped from his, and he leaned forward to slowly push the cloth around her eyes up into his hair, revealing the green eyes that glowed with a faint iridescence. “Ellie, please tell me you know who I am. Don't break me into nothing like this. I'm begging you.”

The group held their breath as the woman's hands lifted to cup his face, thumbs tracing over his lips before she drew his forehead to her own, and though it could be no more than a whisper meant for his ears alone, they heard it within their minds as if it had been spoken plainly.

“You are a fool to think that I could forget you.”

Ashadel released her grasp on the girl as Lorcan pulled the woman into his arms, crushing her to him in a kiss that made Ash uncomfortable to be witnessing in it's intimacy. Katja sped to her mother's side, and after only a few moments of explanation between her mother and the strange new man, found herself drawn into a hug that left the three weeping in unparalleled joy. Wishing to give them some sort of privacy, Ash set her hand on Marric's bare arm, guiding him away before speaking.

“Kalimdor is wild, you say?” She sighed at his nod, chewing the corner of her bottom lip. “How many more like her have you pulled out of the wilds?”

“Four, maybe five? Not many.”

A hand rubbing at the back of her head, she sighed again. “There was only one other I ever met who was as far gone as she is, and there's only one reason she got that far. Without the Druids to guard the Dream, I'm willing to put all the money I have that whatever was corrupting it went absolutely mad with power. Kalimdor had two portals, Hyjal, and several points of leaking corruption already. Even with Hyjal destroyed, the residual power there would have easily allowed a malevolent force to spread like wildfire. Damn.

“If it's gotten Kalimdor, it's only a matter of time before the Eastern Kingdoms drops as well. We aren't talking about something tiny, Marric. Rumors pushed that one of the Old Gods was responsible for that corruption and we don't have anything powerful enough to combat that. We'd have to have sheer luck to go up against one with more than half of our known world in it's grasp and come out without going completely mad.” Chewing a nail, Ash pondered for a moment before looking back to him.

“We have to get all of you out of here. Especially the ones that were touched. There are people who can help, but if nothing else, Lorcan can neutralize the corruption for the time being. It's still a magic, even if it's stubborn. I'd rather take the first option, because I can't see him doing something like that to her.” She gestured back to the pair locked in an embrace, Katja gone from sight.

“We've got five hundred people at the least and not enough boats to carry that many. It would take us several months to get another ship running, and we'd need at least four more. Unless you have an idea, it's going to take a while to get everyone out of here, and I don't know if that's really the best thing for them.” Marric flinched as his friend whirled on him.

“Ask Gildedsun what it was like killing her friend. Ask her what it was like seeing the madness that claimed Brinella, the _thing_ that changed her body so horribly that her only option was to take a chance on the impossible. Ask any of them what it's like living your worst dreams in vivid reality. Imagine, for just one second, having to relive holding Lyre and Temis as they died in your arms. Imagine that, over and over again. Imagine something warping your head, making you think you could save them, and they _still_ die. Every. Damned. Time.

“That is the Nightmare, Mallac. That is the hell these people are living with inside their minds. Every joy turned to terror, every victory made a failure until there is nothing in your mind that you can cling to that will keep you sane. Until you can't tell if the man you've loved for your entire life is your friend or your enemy. Until you smother your child because the in the dreams, you've already watched them die and the one you just killed was a spectre.

“Now imagine the force that a group of those is. They could slaughter your town in their dreams, and make them do it in reality without even lifting a finger. I will not watch Ellie do that to anyone. I will not let her have to live through that. If something like that is on the loose, everyone here is just prey. If you've made it here, others can. It's a matter of time. Are you willing to gamble on lives, Mallac?”

“No. Damn it, but I know you're right. Let's get back to the town. I'll pull them all together, and we can talk this through as we always do, though I've no doubt that everyone will just go with it.”

Her fury abating, she cracked a faint grin, and moved with him as he headed for the nighthawk, grazing on a rabbit scared from it's burrow by the earlier warping. “You always seem to end up a leader, don't you?”

“Shut up.”

Behind them, Lorcan watched them leave, holding Elenie to him as she wept into his leathers. When she calmed, he tipped her chin and bent, stealing a kiss from her that spoke of promises she responded to with a longing groan. He smiled, raking his fingers through her hair and pressing his lips to her forehead, guiding her off in the direction he had seen his daughter go. As they left the glade, the moon shone brightly on the stone she had been perched on.

With a heave, the rock shuddered and unfurled eight slender legs, standing and skittering off into the shelter of the woods, where the accusing glare of the moon could not touch it.


	9. Chapter Nine

The three months that followed did so with a speed that she remembered only in the final moments of the battle against the Legion. The town had voted near unanimously to leave their hiding place near the coast of Grizzly Hills to return to Nalorn and the safety that it provided. Of her team, none had chosen to return before them and alert those who were expecting them. It was not the first time that she had been absent for several months, nor did she even begin to believe that it would be the last. Work came easily to them all, and there was not a single member of the town, even the children, who did not rise at dawn to aid in the gathering and building that had to be done if they were to hope to move so many people.

It was only a few hours before dawn when she found herself sitting on the porch of Marric's modest home, one leg pulled up with her on the railing while the other swung lazily down. In her hands she held a cup of tea, savoring the warmth in the chilly air while the steam teased her nose with the scent of wildberries and green-leaf. There were few working still, most of the people choosing to do their chores by day rather than night, but she allowed them that much. It hadn't been hard to spur the town into choosing what they wanted to do and getting it done.

Her eyes found Lorcan stalking the shadows, identified by the eerie golden light cast by his eyes when his senses were extended. Beside him walked a smaller figure, and she knew it by now to be Katja. The girl had taken to her new father with curiosity and trust, and had slowly worked her way into his heart with her playful antics. They were quite the pair, with the daughter clearly favoring her father's looks, but Asha knew the personality to be that of her mother. The two raised hands to greet the rogue as they slipped from the shadow of one building to the next, and she smiled, holding it until they vanished.

A long ear twitched at a noise within the cabin, and she hid the smirk of her lips against the mug as the door opened and the full-figured blonde known as Vanessa stormed from the building, shooting her a look that might have been able to kill under better circumstances, and continued her hip-heavy strut down to the docks. _Alright, so it hasn't been entirely smooth._ If there was one person who had any qualms about their moving, it was her. Vanessa had only restrained herself due to the overwhelming support of the idea, but it hadn't stopped her from finding every excuse in the book to delay.

Ashadel had bent the knee quite a bit when it came to Vanessa's knowledge. Unfamiliar with boats and their building, she had left the tempestuous woman in charge of what she did best, and found herself otherwise bogged with requests for very specific lumber, several times the amount of cloth needed, longer lengths of rope... it varied on where Ashadel herself was placed, and yet the rogue had done little more than nodded and worked to fulfill the requests. Without fail, no matter where she was, she and her team for the day would always come through. The result, of course, was a tantrum from the blonde, and endless amusement for the members of Ashadel's team.

The door behind her opened again while she took a thoughtful sip from her cup, and her eyes closed as she felt Marric's lips atop her head. His arms followed moments later, wrapping gently around her shoulders to help her as she wiggled into a more comfortable position. There were no words between them, most of anything that needed to be said having already been said and understood. Including the consequences of their actions, primarily between the sheets. There had been no repeat of that, either. While it was never said, she was sure that any hope of something more blooming from that closeness had long ago been killed, likely by herself. It was fair to no one to dance between choices, and she had made hers decades ago. To his credit, if he ever guessed that there was something that bothered her, he didn't force the issue.

“You really should stop poking the dragon,” he murmured against her head, pinching the tip of one of her long ears as she laughed. “Vanessa's a good person beneath the spoiled brat her father made her out to be, and she doesn't really deserve having you flaunt the fact I let you sleep in my bed, while she has to take the other room.” 

The rogue smirked, tipping her head back so that her nose was tucked beneath his chin. “She should stop wandering into your room as if it were her own. She's determined, but spoiled all the same. I'm simply having myself a little fun in teaching her that her efforts are better spent on someone who is interested, instead of someone she sees simply as a...” Her mind struggled for the word, and she pursed her lips before continuing slowly, “... as a testament to her womanliness. I'm not blind, Mal. There's a half-dozen men who are a perfect match for her if she wants to breed, and a good few women who would be loving partners if given half the chance. But she's got her eyes on you for the prestige and power, that's all.”

“I think you're jealous,” he teased, sliding his hand under her vest to press gently on her spine while his other wrapped around her front to hold her. She felt the chill over her skin, and she lifted the mug in her hand to his lips, the cold subsiding as he drank.

“And I think you need to learn how to make a half-decent cup of tea. I thought Temis would have at least done you that mu - ...” She felt his flinch and the graze of his fingers on her skin as he pulled away, and her tone changed from tease to mournful apology within a heartbeat. “I'm sorry, Mal. It's been so long, I suppose I've had time to put her to rest...”

“Stop.” He shook his head and drew away from her, and she knew she had lost him for the moment, even with the easy smile he flashed her. “You're a real idiot, you know. A couple more weeks of work, and we'll have you and Vanessa split apart and completely unable to get into the others pretty golden hair.” He sauntered off down the steps, calling back. “And then I'll be able to get some rest!” She smirked behind her mug, swiping away a bit of clinging cobweb before vanishing back inside the building.

The sun bore down on them, surprisingly harsh for how cool it had been in the weeks leading up to their final stage. Horses had been chained to massive carts, and were now straining against the unfamiliar weight as they were led up enormous ramps into the first of the finished ships. The insistent hammering of the builders from the second and third ships were the only sounds that pierced through the struggling horses and the creaking of the planks. Asha backed along the ramp, guiding the netherdrakes into place before skipping out of range as the mighty dragons bent their heads and pushed.

“Too much strain on tha wheels, lass.” Gromli wiped sweat from his brow, throwing his beard over his bare shoulder. “It's no' goin' ta last long with all tha strain. Shoul'nae let the vixen browbeat you inta packin' so heavy.” They stepped out of the way as Nazaku's wings flared, and with a horrible crunch, the wheels gave out. “Tol' ya.”

Swiping her own brow and regretting her choice to wear her hair long, the rogue sighed and nodded. “Alright, we'll just do it the long way, and maybe she'll leave us alone this time.” Backing off the plank, she motioned for the nearest group to climb into the cart and set up a line. “Someone get those horses unchained before they break something. Naza, Tazru, we need you smaller if you can manage it, please. I think the whole dragon thing is scaring the beasts.”

The drakes trumpeted their agreement, forms shifting in a moment of brilliant light to leave elven males standing awkwardly in the crowd before drawing away to stand beside the rogue and her dwarven companion. Nazaku spoke just loud enough for the two to hear while Tazru's dark and intimidating form watched the workers haul lumber and move crates. 

“They have not been sleeping well. Everything is on edge, including you. I do not like this, my friend. I do not like this one bit. I would prefer that we get those who are deemed important through a portal...” His oddly colored eyes, the same as the rippling colors of his pelt, focused on her as she shrugged.

“Can't leave them, Naza. No more than I could have left you with the orcs all those years ago. Every one of these people is important in some way or another, and I've promised them all sanctuary. I will not decide who is to be left here based simply on where they are by usefulness.” Her eyes were cold as she looked at him, and he withered beneath her glare.

“I will not hint at such again, my friend. You are right.” He moved away from her, and her hard look melted. Grumbling to herself, she swept past the crowd and into the house she shared with Marric, her eyes falling on the large two-hander that hung on the wall behind his desk. It was not his, and their conversation covering it had been brief but all together sweet in memory. That the weapon was here gave her hope, though even Marric couldn't tell her where the owner was. With a few quick steps, she was hefting the blade, a rune flaring into life on her shoulder with a whispered word.

She bound it to her back with ease, the heavy blade like a stick with her augmentation active. A slight smile creased her lips, and she chuckled despite herself. How many years had it been since she had tried to steal that very blade? He'd have a fit, she was sure. If they could find him, she'd tease him. In her heart, she hoped he was alive. Her hand lifted, catching the hilt in her hand over her shoulder, and she sighed. As she expelled the breath, something caught her eye, and she swatted at the hanging spider. Trailing her eyes upwards, she blinked, sudden fear clenching her stomach.

The ceiling swarmed with them.

_Naza!_

She felt the dragon touch on her mind, felt the tremor of worry that reflected her fear as she backed away, the spiders lowering themselves on threads of silk that never seemed to stop. The fear threatened to overwhelm her, not for the sake of the spiders – spiders were simple little things, but for the very feeling of wrong that came with them. The knowledge that, without a doubt, there was going to be something horrible happening. She hit the door, grunting at the two-handed hilt slammed into her head, and, blinking away stars, she turned and jerked the door open in time to hear the first of several screams.

As she bolted down the stairs, the screams rose in fear and in number, but beneath it all was the laughter. Horrible, maniacal laughter that no one in their right minds could ever hope to create normally. 

_Naza, the cells. Check the cells!_

Chaos erupted around her, and the source of it took time for her to find. It was only with the help of Gildedsun, appearing at her side and gesturing towards the treeline, that she realized what was fully going on. The trees, normally a brilliant array of greens and reds, were clouded with white. They bent and swayed, flinging objects that sailed across the town on parachutes of wispy white to land in the sails of the boats. Within minutes, the boats were coated in what she realized were thousands of little spiders.

_They're empty. The guards are dead. From the looks of it, they opened the cells themselves before the captives... rewarded them. I cannot find them, though Lorcan says your daughter is refusing to move. I do not wish to imply it, but I think she may have something to do with this._

Drawing in a hissed breath, Ashadel motioned for the Warden to follow, and the two plowed through the frightened peasants, who ran to their homes without thinking. Reaching a crest overlooking the Plaza, she shouted for Triadae to find the others and get Yani to the rune circle, shoving through those who lingered in stunned amazement while another cast of spiderlings sailed overhead. The sun was becoming blocked behind a mist-like shroud, more terrifying than any cloud. 

“Hoax!” She skid down an incline, nearly losing her footing at the bottom as dirt became sudden road, but caught herself and pulled up alongside the lean man and the woman he was shaking.

Ellie's eyes glowed, a strange pattern lacing from beneath the dress she wore over her skin in twists and curls of corrupt design, like thorned vines that grew over a patch of flowers. Her lips bled, as if she had chewed through the skin in her fervent mutterings, her eyes on the sky. Lorcan shot a glance to Ashadel, one that spoke of far more than just simple concern, just before the earth lurched beneath them as it had done when they had first found the woman. Her command was silent, regret showing on her face even as Hoax shook his head, his voice a plea. 

“Don't make me do that to her. Anyone else, but not her.” His hands clasped the side of Ellie's head, but the woman was unseeing, glee dancing along her features as another wave of spiders shot through the sky. It was like sundown now, the last vestiges of a brilliant sun attempting to filter through the cocoon being weaved over the city. “I can't do that to her!”

“It's your job, Hoax! Sometimes that job means we do things we can't live with. But it's either this, or we kill her. You take your pick.”

The man's eyes flared gold, and with a tormented look shot at her, he looked away and towards Elenie. The love he bore her showed as he pulled her yielding body close, hands twined in her hair while his forehead dropped to her own. The twisting feeling beneath their feet gave way to a harsh shudder as Elenie's mouth opened in a scream that rose until it was utterly soundless, flaring runes twisting from his grasp to burn over her skin. She bucked against his grasp, her body writhing against his own as the runes overpowered the design stretching over her skin, cutting it to pieces.

The earth stopped moving beneath her feet as Elenie fainted, and Lorcan pulled her body into his arms. He refused to meet her eyes, pushing past to be swallowed into the crowd as he made his way towards the Plaza, guided by the instructions given by Nazaku in each of their minds. Ashadel followed, spotting the group that sought to activate the runes and open the link between Azeroth and Nalorn, the few who had decent enough skill standing in a circle around Yani, who had spent all of her time working with them to attune them to the latent powers of the new world.

It was then, as she stood among the mass of people that screamed and pushed for the Plaza, that all sound seemed to dim until it was barely audible. To match, the movements of those around her grew sluggish and slow, though she herself still seemed able to move easily. Beside her, she saw the slim form of the Warden, who was staring at something just over her shoulder. The sounds completely died, the surge of power under her feet felt as Yani and her group ripped open the new tear, and children were escorted by weeping and frightened women. But her eyes had found what Triadae's had, and she refused to look away. 

The woman stood in the shadows of two buildings, the dark doing nothing to hide the shimmering mist of green that encapsulated her body. She was ethereal and beautiful, just visible enough that one might look away and think she had been nothing more than a figment of the imagination. There was a sad look to her eyes, her wine-dark hair blowing in an invisible light wind, baring the strip of white just behind one of her ears. Her gown was a rich green lined with brown, and there were small pouches on her hips. Her hands lifted, lips moving to speak words that only ghosted over Ashadel's ears.

She became aware of the Warden grasping her arm the moment that the earth heaved. The two stumbled to the ground, with Ashadel crouched protectively beneath the plate-covered woman as an unearthly groan pierced through the silence, tearing it apart and adding to the screams as people began a mad rush towards the open portal. With a harsh crack, the earth split, and a shrill cry of fear and anger swamped them as the very trees grew their roots up towards the sky beyond the veil of webbing. The boats, forgotten in the mad rush for the portals, were torn from their moorings and crushed. Light filtered through the hole, brilliant and promising light, and then it was truly dark.

“Like Gilneas,” the Warden murmured as the screams died to soft sobs, the harsh barking of Gromli and Lorcan heard as they herded the frightened people through the portal. She moved off of Ashadel, and the woman was left alone as her Warden moved towards the others, setting up a perimeter of those who were willing and able to fight. It did not take long to become warm within the confines, air stilled except for the frantic rushing. As the minutes passed and nothing happened, she found herself lost in a mass of warm and frightened bodies, but the town was emptying. Emptying with no sign of anything else.

It was wrong, and she knew it as she heard the whispers. Secretive and sly, they filtered down from the tightly knit branches above and wove promises into the ears of those who stopped to listen. It was a siren song, and she struggled to fight the urge to lay down, to sleep, to give up the fight and forget those who were frightened and alone. She was not the only one, the ring of fighters dropping their weapons one by one and walking away from the portal, away from safety.

Except for one. Ashadel saw Triadae standing in front of Yani as a human shield, her blade raised in front of her with golden light dancing along the blade in ripples and swirls of light that dripped at her feet, shaping the rune that bolstered her magical strength. A barrier formed around the casters, ancient glyphs and sigils carved into the ground in brilliant golden light that illuminated the hell amassing in the darkness above them. The branched writhed and screamed, the beings hidden in the leaves twisting grotesquely away from the light, unwilling to be brought into sight while those still hidden continued their lulling whispers and promises.

She realized that she had begun to walk away, listening to a familiar voice that cut through the manic shouting in her mind until it was all that she was focused on. Shouting could be heard, but it was as if through water; slow and distant, echoing around her but never actually directed towards her. Like walking through somewhere safe and home-like, she paused to run her fingers over stones that had taken the shape of familiar items; a training sword here, her first horse there. The memories trickled from her mind and into the mixed reality of the world until she stood in front of an emaciated figure that towered over her.

It cooed and chittered, and yet she heard only words of praise as it touched her. Her mind registered it as a maternal figure, and she ignored the spiders that crawled from the hands that held her face cupped within, unfeeling as they made their way beneath her armor and into her hair, winding webs into strands until she seemed to be garbed in wedding regalia. Like lovers reunited after a lifetime apart, she stood on tiptoe, falling into the embrace of the inhuman creature as it lowered a mouth flanked by mandibles to her own, and breathed more of the spiderlings between her parted lips.

Then there was pain, the horrible screeching of a dying creature as it became limned with light and then ignited, running screaming in an attempt to douse the holy flames that wracked it's arachnid-like humanoid body. Ashadel registered sickness behind a fog that came, sending her rolling as she collapsed into the arms of someone unknown and was finally guided to her back. Crimson hair flared in her fuzzy sight, and beneath the pounding scream that seemed to take hold in her mind, she could hear a voice calling to her, feel her body being shaken, and most of all... could see the ethereally beautiful woman from before, mouthing words that her mind could not comprehend. The feeling of choking consumed her.

Ashadel woke, shooting up from her pillows in a cold sweat. Her fingers gripped the blanket tightly, so much so that she could feel her nails driving into the skin of her palms. Terror, the only thing that she could remember no matter how hard she tried to focus on anything else, still made her shake and itch as if a hundred thousand tiny feet skittered over her skin. Sucking in a breath, her eyes caught on the sleeping form that lay beside her in the bed, and her fear dwindled. A smile pulled at her lips, and she pushed aside auburn hair to place a kiss on the cheek of the man who warmed her bed.

Unable to completely quell the uneasy feeling, she slipped out of the bed with care taken to not wake her lover. She stumbled sleepily into the room that served as the bathroom, hands reaching for the lantern than hung beside the door, casting warm light into an otherwise dark room. Catching herself in the mirror, she combed fingers through her hair, pulling her fingers away to examine the sticky feel that clung to the slender digits. Rubbing her fingers together as if to spur the odd sensation away, she turned and stepped into the shower that was still cloaked in dark, sighing softly as the warm water touched on sweaty skin.

The sticky feeling left her, though it took longer for the itching to subside no matter how hard she scrubbed. From time to time, it felt as if she had dealt herself larger cuts with her scrubbing, but looking briefly at her skin revealed little more than flesh that was completely whole. Unsettled, she lay her head against the rock wall and let the water run down her body, not noticing that she was no longer alone until she felt the hard body of someone else pres up against her back, a hand reaching up around her body to settle possessively beneath the collar she wore while the other looped loosely around her hips to pull her back against him.

He questioned her, and she found herself reciting what she had seemingly said countless times before. A nightmare, nothing more, and she just wanted to wash the bad feelings away. His arms tightened around her, his hand dipping lower to graze over her labia, drawing an uncertain rumble of a groan from her. The gesture, so gentle and curious as the fingers delved further to slide completely between her legs, seemed wrong to her somehow. Wrong enough that she was helpless to resist as a single finger pressed further, sliding between the folds to plunge deep and curl on her most intimate spot, drawing out a rich and throaty moan.

His name was murmured, his glowing white eyes blazing with pleasure as he took the tip of her ear into his mouth and nibbled, slowly driving his finger into her until she could take more. He gave her more, finger by finger, until she was panting against him, her walls spasming around his fingers. His hand loosened from around her neck, replaced by his mouth, hungrily biting and suckling the flesh while he slowly coaxed her back until he sat on the small seat carved into the wall of the shower. She fell willingly back, her legs thrown over his own to spread her wide.

Urged by him, she wet her fingers in her mouth, letting them dip lower to toy and play with her clit while her other hand sought out his shaft, pulling a groan from him as she stroked him from base to tip and back again in time with his own motions. She needed no urging to guide him to her slit when his hand pulled away, and their moan was mutual as he hilted within her completely. Linking her arms up and around his neck, she moved her hips, near dancing atop his lap until she thought they both might burst.

But the end never came. The edge was there, so close that her body quivered and she was panting, begging for the sweet release that neither had shared in several years, responding to each of his taunts with husky mewls and fervent pleas even while his hands roamed her body as if it were a treasured possession. So enraptured by the feeling of him within her, something that she had longed for quietly for decades, she didn't notice the new addition until he drew her attention to it.

A slim dagger, delicate and beautiful in it's lethality, held in his hand for a heartbeat before it pressed to her skin. He let it stay there, let her heartbeat quicken as he toyed with fear, and then the game was done as he pushed the blade into her just above her pubic bone. She felt skin sliced apart, felt the sting, and felt fear choke her as the pain increased to the tune of his bucking. The blade impaled, she realized with sick dread that she could feel the head of his cock within her, beating on the flat of the blade and spurring it into more damage. Her scream was choked, the possessive hand closing tighter upon her windpipe, stalling any sound except for the gurgling whimpers as her world became a hell of blood and dark.

Ashadel woke, shooting up from her pillows in a cold sweat. Daylight streamed through her window, doing little to ease the fear she felt but could not remember the source of. Her hand lifted to push at her sodden hair, and she cast a quick glance beside her only to find the bed empty. This did not surprise her. In fact, she felt an unknown sense of relief that seemed completely out of place with the absence of her master. Confused, but passing it off as simply part of the unease from her sudden waking, she left the bed and quickly dressed, leaving her room.

She found herself at the training circles, though she had no recollection of walking there from her room. Regardless, she found herself drawn to the solitary figure in the middle of one of the rings, no surprise felt when he turned and she was met with the vivid green eyes of one of her most irritating companions. His hair glinted copper in the sun, and he tossed her a pair of practice swords, shouting something taunting that she responded to with equal play before they both darted towards each other.

It was a dance of skill and intimacy, played out consistently over the years they had known each other. Their blows were matched and easily parried, her deft twists of the blade sending him to her side where she would dance out of range as he slashed at her as if to hack away at flesh that was no longer present. They were dearest friends and worst enemies, together by pure circumstance, but they trusted one another as they trusted few others. So she knew, even when he lashed a foot out at her leg and caught her out, jerking it out from beneath her suddenly, that she was perfectly safe.

His chuckle brought warmth from her as he grasped her ankle and pulled her closer over the sand, pinning her beneath him. Her retort, made in playful anger, was swallowed as his lips met hers in a crushing kiss that left them both panting more than their dizzying duel. Beneath him, she bucked and struggled, finally managing to dislodge him and kick him away, on her feet and running in an instant, only to be brought down again.

This time, his hands spared no time in ripping at her shirt, using the shreds of cloth to bind her wrists to hold them easier while she laughed and squirmed beneath him, her giggles quickly becoming panting moans as his mouth found her breasts and suckled the hardened nipples. He closed his teeth around them, bringing delicious spikes of pain that were all too brief before he sought out new flesh, nosing his way up her body while his free hand worked his length from his pants and tore her own open. Their pleasure was mutual, his arm looping beneath her to help bring her closer as he thrust into her without preamble.

She lost herself on the pleasure, felt him coax her feverishly to a climax that twisted and stalled and finally was granted to the both of them. Her hips rolled, walls squeezing and milking his shaft while he devoured her breast. The sudden lance of strange pain, beyond that of the gentle nips that she was used to this particular lover, made her eyes open only to find the horrific sight of his teeth tearing into her skin. She burned from within, as if something ate away at inner flesh where he had just spilled within her, and her body twisted so wildly that she felt bones break and disconnect, and yet he continued to pump inside of her, continued to feast upon her flesh until all that was left of her chest was a cavern of gore and acidic mucus.

Ashadel woke, cold and frightened with no idea why. Her surroundings were unfamiliar; a camp in the shield of a scraggly group of trees on the side of a mountain that she couldn't have placed to any known area inside her memory. Tossing aside the fur that covered her, she stood and took in her surroundings, altogether unimpressive for the sake that they seemed like any other high peak mountains. Running her hands through her hair, she bent to pick up the fur and pull it around herself, setting off down the only path that seemed available to her.

The trail dipped and bent, and she found herself traveling along the bottom of a deep gorge before long, the wind pushing her along over the sharp rocks and fallen trees that had been blown into the trench at such speed that it became a fight to work back against it, preventing herself from being flung face first into the gulley. Growing quickly tired, she stood behind a large rock that blocked the wind, her skin itching from perspiration beneath the armor at the effort it had taken to keep herself from being flung like a doll against the rocks.

Weary and wishing for rest, she glanced around for something that she could use as a more secure shelter from the wind, and found herself instead staring at a discarded old cart covered in snow, long forgotten by any animal that might have pulled it there. Curious and anxious, she left the rock and stumbled toward the thing of wood and metal, spotting no animal at all but dimly aware that the cart was familiar and safe. The old paint could just barely be seen along the side as she passed it, a crimson rose on a backing of black, and she sucked in breath before chuckling softly to herself.

The wind had died enough that she no longer had to fight, though she clung tight to the wood as she made it to the front of the cart and saw the thick rope that they once used for hitching. Slipping down, she cowered in the shadow of the cart as the sun rose, and as the hours passed and she still found herself alone and the wind howled, the sun began to set.

Her ears flicked as the shadows grew, a dull thunder rumbling the air and ground around her. Cold and stiff, she groaned as she stood and peered out, confused as to the source of the noise. It was silent, no matter how long she looked, nothing was moving. Dropping down once more, she had no longer to wait than the moment her ass touched the ground when the trench shook. Not one to be caught like a fool, she jumped up and was quickly blasted with cold air laced with thousands of shards of rocks that cut at her skin.

Pained, she cleared her vision and cast her eyes down the trench, paling as she spied the source of the noise. The walls were closing in, and a few moments of time proved that the process was going quicker as time passed. Snow flooded into the trench as the rumbling brought down avalanches, and pure terror choked her, forcing her a few steps back to turn as if to flee, only to trip over the hitching rope.

A mad thought claimed her, and she grabbed the rope and hauled on it as if there was nothing more important than moving the cart itself down the trench. It resisted as she knew it would, and the trench slammed shut closer, urging her to continue. It never crossed her mind to leave the rope and cart, never crossed her mind that she could climb out of the gulley before the walls crushed her, never once did she think of saving herself. Her mind focused only on moving the massive mess of wood. Her hands burned, rubbed raw with her efforts, her skin itching anew and tears streaming from her eyes as the trench slammed shut again and branches whipped against her back, opening flesh clear to bone. Still she refused to release the rope, and at last felt it yield with an unearthly scream. Too late, the trench trembled around her and then slammed shut, snow swallowing her vision as she fell into blackness.

Ashadel did not wake up.


	10. Chapter Ten

“Good. Very good. Now, extend the range to encompass the both of them so that it is easier to manipulate them together. Such a skill is the beginning step to seeing if you have the ability to chain. Connecting two separate runes, even if they are equal, is a promising start.” Xaedryx's voice behind her was patient despite the instruction, soothing her uncertainties as she reached out her mind to touch upon the two, unweaving the threads that had been cast by the runes and connecting them to each other.

The women, one a pale redhead and the other a dark-skinned brunette, stepped towards each other with outreached hands, palms finding supple skin and full breasts to massage and stroke, nipping playfully between shy giggles. Maeve watched them much as a puppetmaster might, plucking the strings that urged them into a playful and then promising kiss, the smaller redhead pulled tight against the other as hands began to wander lower.

“Compelling the curious into acting on their interests is, of course, easy.” The whisk of cloth accompanied Xaedryx's movements as she stepped up behind the brunette, gently pulling her apart from the other girl, much to both of their obvious sadness. Their breathing came in heavy gasps, lust fogging their eyes that refused to look away from the other. “Now, release them.”

The threads untied easily beneath her fingers, the runes flaring out and casting the cavern into considerable darkness. A lantern was lit, and Maeve smiled as the two women collided under their own wills, drawing each other to the floor to lose themselves in pleasure. Her smile faltered when she looked back to Xaedryx, spotting the brief look of pain before the mask was in place again. She moved to follow the woman as she left, no longer needing to be beckoned.

“You are doing very well, Maeve. Your mother would be quite proud.” The long ears of the Kaldorei twitched in the sunlight, the praise rolling easily off her tongue as the two walked. She glanced down at the petite girl, a small moment of affection granted as she noticed, not for the first time, that Maeve had filled out nicely in the last few months, and looked much more healthy.

Unfortunately, she had not been able to partner the girl, either by her own choice or simply because the amount of work that had been brought to her was too much. Maeve had little time for herself, yet never raised a complaint. While it should have soothed the elder woman, it instead disturbed her. “Maeve, do you spend the night in any bed but your own?”

“I - … no.” Maeve knit her fingers, chewing idly on her bottom lip. “I don't really have any reason, do I? It wasn't a requirement, only an option given by the Headmistress.”

“True. Do you not desire the company of another?”

“Not really.” The girl glanced up at her teacher, then looked away as if ashamed. “I can't see anyone but my father when I think about being intimate. It's not something I want anyone else to have to deal with, let alone myself. I'm alright, really. The school is a better home than mine ever was, and I have lots of work to keep me busy. I don't need the little relationships that people keep for themselves to be happy. I have other things.”

Xaedryx smiled, gesturing to a circle of stones set beneath a copse of trees. As Maeve settled herself on the familiar seat she liked to take, the elder woman did the same, her hands folded in her lap. “I was once like you, a very long time ago. Long before all but a few that you might see here, I believed the same things that you did. That I was content in my learning, that I needed no one else to make me happy. But the years passed, and I found myself quickly starting to think different.

“I would never imply that a woman or a man needs a partner in order to survive, but there is a bond there that can never be found even in a friendship. A level of intimacy that makes things... easier to bear.” She smirked, lifting a hand to quiet Maeve's question before she could speak it. “I was married once, yes. Bound for life to a man who accepted me for all my faults and all my pride. He knew me as few others ever would, and he made an empty life... whole. A long life with little joy in it was made brilliant and beautiful, all for the love of one man.

“He died at Hyjal, so many long years ago. He died by my hand, his mind warped by the Nathrezim that had accompanied the Legion. It was a very long time before I allowed myself to open up again, and I found my peace in a curious man. Human, short-lived and arrogant. Cocky. Self-assured. He would have driven you mad if you had ever met him, but...” her tone and features softened, became almost sad, “I loved him. To be immortal, or near enough to it, and fall in love with someone who will live as a fly might in the grand scheme of things? It was foolish. It was... the most painful thing I could have ever done to myself. But I loved him, Maeve. If he had but asked, I would have given him everything of me, far beyond our play of man and pet.”

She went quiet, and Maeve took her time in watching the struggle of emotions that played on the perfect face in front of her. Xaedryx was a woman without weakness, who had become a second mother to a lost child, and never once had she let the shield down that she had now. Worse still, Maeve knew that her inexperience made it impossible for her to show empathy, and the thought that she could not help the woman who had been so kind to her made her ache. So she simply listened, but it seemed that the small slip of emotion was all that was going to come.

“Now then.” Xaedryx pulled a metallic object from her voluminous robes and set it on the ground. “Eaxoa hardly stopped creating just because the world was lost,” she explained at Maeve's confused look, which only grew as a black button was pushed and a blue rune flared into life across the flat surface. Above it, a pair of vertical lines stood suspended. “Most of your schooling has so far been centered around the past. Now, I think it is time that we focus a bit on the present. In time, we will look to the future. Let us learn of those we inhabit this world with, hmm? What races have you heard of?”

Maeve chewed her lip, then shrugged. “There was one, my second day here. It started with a T, I think. They had something to do with the giant snakes.”

“The Topani, yes. A good race to begin with.” Tapping the metallic object again, the lines cubed and then formed into a male and female figure. Becoming used to the odd hologram device, Maeve scooted forward to sit directly in front of it. “The Topani are a subrace of elven humanoid native to this word, much like how Azeroth had the various types of elves. They are named for where they originated, the Topani Forest, located... well, several thousand miles away.

“From what we've learned so far, the race is not the youngest of the subraces. Their history places them roughly in the middle of the line, and they are one of the most pure of the elven races, quite possibly to the point of becoming a race all on their own rather than simply an off-shoot. This is different from something like the differences between the High Elves and the Blood Elves, who were approaching a point of complete separation before the Sunwell was restored. Now, those who are Sin'dorei are defined mostly by their loyalties by bloodline than by anything else, though they are commonly seen with the green eyes that have become natural to them through breeding than the blue of the Quel'dorei. I digress.

“The Topani, unlike the vast majority of the races on this planet, are not tied to the Lattice as we understand it. They are instead tightly bound with the natural order much as the Kaldorei are, though there is a far more primal link to them. Whatever magic they hold is completely dependent on where they reside, not their skill. It is this little difference that grants the different _kals_ , or tribes, their names. The closest of the kals to us is the Lighthide Kal, which specializes in the animals that live in the forest around them.

“Topani life starts with the young. Both genders are valued equally, with men and women holding the same amount of power and sway in all things. Infants are cared for by both parents, which deviates slightly from the animals that the Topani imitate. The reason for this is because of how much stock the Topani put in strength and health; a female who stays at home and relies on her mate for all things is considered weak, and so are her children. In most tribes, she will be banned from bearing more children, and her mate is given a healthy female to breed.

“This is not a one-way street, however. If a male shows weakness in some way, even in something as slight as remaining in bed if he happens to become ill, he is disgraced in a similar manner, and his mate given to a stronger male with whom to mate. Same gender couples exist rarely, with the pairings dependent on the assumed gender of the kal's patron deity. The Lighthides follow “Angros,” who is often represented as a sleek swamp panther. To that end, his clerics are generally paired women who have given themselves over to him.”

Xaedryx smirked, propping her chin in her palm as she bent near the hologram device. “Angros bears a striking resemblance to the kin of Saiya, and so they are somewhat worshipped by the tribe, though they are wary of Saiya herself.” Brushing a finger over the object, the two figures merged to one, male and nude. “Topani men tend to be quite large, ranging from six and a half feet to nearly a foot more. Once they reach maturity, they cease cutting their hair. Despite this, it is extremely rare to encounter a Topani male who has hair longer than the small of his back.

“While female Topani are required to act as incubators for the Drogasti before being considered mature, the males are instead made to complete their first ritual, which essentially boils down to the Topani male finding an animal that will become it's soulmate. An odd term, given what we consider a soulmate to be, but it is a little bit like that. The animal is bound with them utterly, sharing their life as if it were their own. This ritual gives the Topani a piece of their nature-bound magic.

“It is not uncommon to find shapechangers among the Topani, though they are limited entirely to the shape of their soulmate. While this tends to sway most of the men to choose animals native to the location of their tribe, we've encountered a few who are bound to animals that don't. Female Topani undergo a different ritual, forsaking the soulmate for a bond instead with the earth itself. It is said that the reason for this is because women are like the earth, which gives birth to all life. Of course, there's always the odd bird who decides they'd rather take the soulmate. This is not looked unkindly on, but it isn't common.”

The image zoomed in, and Maeve made out the hard jaw and angular features of the man before noticing the small, slightly raised scars set uniformly along the face. “The Topani do participate in decorative scarification, with each scar symbolizing something different. These three here between the brows are given once the male or female reaches maturity. These here,” she gestured to horizontal lines, one each, beneath the eyes, “are given once a Topani is mated. The only difference between the male and female is the number. Women will receive two lines beneath each eye, representing that her mate's soulmate has accepted her as his own. It does sometimes happen that the man and his animal have differing opinions, of course.

“On the shoulders, the marks vary for the men. From what we understand, they are given by the soulmate themselves; the first on the right shoulder for when contact is first initiated, the second on the left shoulder for when the binding is complete. I've personally seen more marks that look like the claws of a cat than the talons of an eagle, or the fangs of a Drogasti. As the Topani age, they gain other ritualistic scars. Ones to show they have borne a child, ones to show that child has become an adult... they take pride in these markings.

“Topani women are tall as well, and very strong.” The figure changed to an adult female, complete with her maturity scars. While not overly muscled, she bore very little in the way of curves, and reminded Maeve strongly of a lurking feline when moving. Graceful and dangerous, and exotically beautiful. “Their maximum height is the minimum for males. As their skill with their earth magic increases, they gain more delicate and beautiful scars. One of the more personable Topani we know has scars that resemble the wind from the base of her spine, around her side, and up over one breast and half her stomach. They are very talented with their tools, and the body is their canva -...”

Xaedryx narrowed her eyes as the metallic disc blinked, the figure fading away as if the device had run out of power. The woman did not bother to try to bring the Topani image up again, instead standing and moving through the trees until she had reached the edge of the island that the school sat upon. Below her, the ramp that Maeve had explored herself her second day at the Academy dipped below into water that had become black as night. Maeve moved beside her, as curious as her mentor was concerned.

Below them, the dark waters became cut with threads of light, slithering through the depths like serpents. It took longer than it should have for her to recognize the shielding rune, though it was one of far greater craft and design than she herself had been trained in. The sight, while beautiful, seemed only to unnerve her teacher. The design continued, weaving and dancing beneath what was now a churning lake until at last, the threads stretched upwards and broke free of the water, spreading out over the Academy until the entire school was shrouded in a barely perceptible skin, not unlike a bubble.

Xaedryx's hand grasped Maeve's wrist, and without warning, the girl and her companion vanished from the light and beautiful garden to a cave that Maeve had not yet been to. Stalactites and stalagmites were the most noticeable decoration, lining the outside edge of the room in such a manner that Maeve was tempted to guess that they had instead stepped into the mouth of a very large dragon. Behind her, the single entrance to the large room was dark, and she could only just see the outline of what may have been the curve of a tunnel. The cavern, aside from the rocky décor, was unerringly smooth. The floor bore no imperfections that she could see, and the ceiling – the top of which was several hundred feet above – was bowl-shaped and just as smooth. Where the floor was completely black, the walls and ceiling held flickers of some metal that gleamed as if the room had been decorated further with stars.

“You should not be here, so try to be as invisible as possible.” Xaedryx's tone had gone distant and cold, and Maeve withdrew as her mentor's hand lifted before her, a ripple forming as a staff-like object appeared and was grasped. It seemed to Maeve as though it was made of the very stone that surrounded them, save for the eerie purple-blue sphere that crowned it, pulsing as if it had a heartbeat and was alive. Sweeping forward, Xaedryx moved to the center of the room and lifted the staff, and it left her hands to float and rise until nearly halfway between floor and ceiling.

Sounds from behind her startled her out of her curiosity, and she squished herself against one of the rocky pillars as six people, four men and two women, spilled into the room and instantly took up positions around Xaedryx, as if this very situation had been practiced a hundred times before. Runes gradually grew into existence beneath each of them, and while she could not be certain of their exact layout, there was something in the setup that reminded her strongly of the last moments of the grisly battle seen in the Arcaenum.

Her fingers tightened on the rock against her as she felt what she could only describe as a gut-wrenching jerk, and a strong beam of amethyst light shot from the staff directly to the ground, and then split as if it were a curtain being opened, with the staff the very pinnacle of it all. From within the purple limned curtain came flashes of azure and amethyst light on a black background, as striking as the flare of a sun as it reached for the Kaldorei woman who stared into the depths. Maeve buried her face against the stone, her body aching already from the incessant pull of the portal, but she kept one eye focused on the scene before her.

So it was that she saw the first of what emerged through the torrent of unleashed power. A child, stumbling and alone, crying out for someone that she could not see. Her shock at seeing such a defenseless toddler wandering alone was matched when the command from Xaedryx came, as strained as it sounded pained, and Maeve scrambled from her place to gesture for the frightened child to come to her. The little girl, face red beneath golden curls, seemed reluctant to leave the place where she appeared. It was a feeling the dissolved as the runed marking below Xaedryx's feet splintered and spread, blue against purple as it stretched and connected to the other runes held by those who assisted her.

The compulsion to approach the portal, once so very strong that it seemed to pull her all on it's own, reversed. Now, the child ran screaming from the open gap into Maeve's arms, sobbing into the cloth covering her shoulder. Her sobs, heart-breaking on their own, were joined by more as children and women stumbled from the portal into the dark of the room. They pushed past each other, swarming around the edges of the cavern as best they could, calling for one another. Sobs of fear became those of relief, and Maeve passed the crying girl to a young boy no more than twelve who nearly squeezed her to death in his own joy.

They were careful, despite their fear. None stumbled into those who held the portal open, and as the cavern filled, there were some who had clearly held a line wherever they had come from stand as guards around those who were now straining and fighting to hold the gate open. As the flood became a trickle, those who were appearing were wounded and clearly weak. Maeve saw the great forms of the dragons push through the portal, carrying unmoving forms across their backs and even in their jaws. The Warden Commander, a familiar face that she knew only by sight, came through with one arm loosely hanging at her side, the other looped around the back of a tall man she could not place. She was uncertain, as they vanished into the swelling crowd, who was supporting whom.

“If'n ye know how ta mend, step forward! Tired or not, yer responsible for those ye've been family ta for these long years.” A dwarven man spoke over the murmuring crowd, quickly barking out orders for people to be moved and tended to. Maeve was surprised to see even young children helping where they could, even if it was simply holding the hair of someone out of their face. With direction from those clearly trained to keep their heads in times of stress, the room was quartered around those who kept the portal open.

A task that was becoming much more difficult as the void within cracked the mirror surface, reaching out particles of pale pink and blue that slipped around the unmoving form of the Kaldorei in the midst of the circle. They tangled in her hair, pulled at her as if a lover craving her company elsewhere, and yet she stood firm as the outline of the portal began to crack and pull from the edges. One by one, the accompanying mages were tossed aside as if a force had pushed them away from their runes and away from their safety, until it was only Xaedryx standing in front of the yawning abyss that convulsed like an animal in pain.

The portal lurched, and so did the stomachs of all those around them, though it was only Maeve who saw her teacher break her runes and reach into the tearing abyss, pulling one last figure from it before the portal crashed closed and her staff fell, lifeless, to hit the ground beside her. The clatter from it was the only sound heard beyond that of moans of pain and heavy breathing. The silence stretched, until at last someone decided to speak.

“That's an arm. Light help me, I'm going to be sick.”

The announcement seemed to generate a buzz of agreement as those with weaker stomachs looked away. Curious children were drawn back into the crowd, but Maeve herself pushed through them, stepping over those with quiet apologies until she drew up beside Xaedryx and saw the truth for herself.

Ashadel was barely recognizable beneath the blood. Fragments of webbing clung to armor that had been torn in so many places, only a few more cuts would be needed to remove it. Beneath the leather, blood and dirt were caked into wounds that were dire in some places, cut clear to bone. Her lip was split and bleeding, and along the skin that had managed not to be cut or painted with blood, bites had swollen the skin and turned it an uneasy shade of green. Unsettling, her daggers remained firmly set within their sheaths, and across her back was a large broadsword covered in the webs that clung to her. She held only one thing, tight in the grasp of one hand. An arm, severed at the shoulder and draped in cloth that once may have been part of an expensive gown. No more – the blue blood stained it, pooling on the ground.

Xaedryx quelled Maeve's fear with a quick look and shake of her head, her fingers pressed to the pulse on Ashadel's neck. “She's alive, if only just. There's a chance she won't be if we can't get her somewhere quiet and seal these wounds. Take that, there,” Xaedryx motioned with her chin towards the sword across the rogue's back, pulling a pouch no larger than her hand from off her belt. As Maeve struggled with the considerably massive object, her teacher opened the pouch and slipped it over the pommel. The blade seemed to lighten considerably, effectively swallowed into the bag with not a sign of anything more than the glitter of runic stitching. “Keep this on your belt. Do not mention it to anyone. Not a soul.”

Slipping her arms beneath the prone figure, she drew the woman tight to herself, and wrapped her in the cloak she wore. Maeve noticed that she did not attempt to sever the grasp the rogue had on the arm, simply shifting it to lay atop Ashadel's chest, pinned between the two woman. “Gromli.” Though Xaedryx hadn't lifted her voice even an inch, the dwarf that had been earlier ordering around the newcomers appeared at her side with his hands stuck in his belt.

“They cannot remain here. Take half the room, along with their animals, and get them to one of the towns. Set them up in the infirmary there, and then return to the Arcaenum. Take Lorcan...” Her brows drew together as Gromli shook his head.

“The lad has 'is own problems, lass. Turns out the man had a dame and filly waitin' for 'im on tha other side.” The dwarf looked to a darkened corner where the shadows fell on a group of three. “I'll take tha girl, though. Good head on 'er shoulders, and tha camp knows 'er well enough. Let Lorcan take care of his lass.” The dwarven features softened, and he rubbed the back of his head. “Poor lad neutralized 'er before comin' through tha portal. I'll take mine ta Stone. Yani's mate lives there... 'e deserves ta hear the truth from us before tha rumors go flyin'.”

Grumbling under his breath, the dwarf stalked off to the hidden group, speaking with a hidden figure that revealed herself as she pulled away from the others to follow him through the crowd, speaking to individuals who seemed too stunned to move. Slowly, those who could stood and gathered children and animals, and left the cavern by the single doorway. They reminded her of sheep, coaxed and guided complacently out of the tunnel, no doubt completely frightened and yet utterly dependent on the two who guided them.

“Aerynar.” One of the men who had entered earlier neared, his blonde hair stained red from a gash above his brow. “How many are wounded?”

Maeve's body shivered as the man spoke, his voice deep and lulling despite his half-elven appearance. “Kalypso barely hangs onto consciousness. The others are wounded and do not wake. They seem otherwise unharmed, so it is likely they simply need rest. Of those who came through the gate? Dozens. Injuries vary from mere bruises from being jostled to gashes that will require anything from stitches to severe life-threading. We don't have enough at our disposal to take care of so many. The worst of them alone will wipe out any single healer.

“We're lucky the damage was not worse than it is. Forgetting whatever might have happened on the other side, that gate was forcibly closing on us. It shouldn't have been opened at all. The worst of those injured here are, from what we've quickly begun to understand, those who held open the portal until it became too much. From there? Only one was holding it. Just enough to get one last person through, while closing it behind them. I believe we have a hero, though I hardly think that will temper the anguish that Orion will feel at the loss of his mate.”

Concern knitting her brows, Xaedryx nodded at last and sighed. “Go to your mother. Clear the infirmary of those skipping classes, and get as many beds open so that we can get those who need rest into their care. Personally see to the preparation of the trauma ward, and convince your mother to clear one of the ley-rooms.” Glancing quickly down to the rogue in her grasp, her head cocked. “If you must, tell her who will occupy it. I'm sure there will be bodily harm threatened. Before you go,” the man paused, clearly listening.

“Maeve, you will go with him. Help as you can with the basic rooms, but once you feel that you are not needed, fetch Petra. Houndstooth should be with her. Kindly request that she and her companion send for help from the Lighthides. When you have completed this, return to the Arcaenum. I will join you there.” She motioned for the smaller girl to follow the blonde, turning away.

Aerynar's touch on her arm was light but no less effective than if he had grabbed her and pulled her after him. The two made their way from the cavern and into the tunnel, with silence their only companion for a time. When the wall became a window, Maeve stopped and stared in wonder. She had expected sky, but what was lit instead was an underwater grove shot through with dancing white light. 

“Never been here before, I take it?” The man came to stand behind her, looping an arm around her shoulder as he drew her further down the hall. “The Void Hall is used only in emergencies, as it is powered by a relic irrevocably bound to Xaedryx herself. The rune you see there,” he flicked a hand at the dancing lights outside another window, “is a chain created by the Headmistress. When power taps into the Hall, the rune is triggered much like a trap. The Academy becomes utterly shielded, unable to even be sensed by the outside world.

“What you see out there is the lake. We're at the very base of the island, approximately a league down. It was the safest place that was deemed acceptable for the Hall. Step here,” his hand closed around hers as they touched upon a sigil engraved in the ground, and found themselves instead standing in light. Above them, splinters appeared in the barely perceptible veil, a shower of glittering dust slowly floating away as the barrier dissolved. “Without the portal open, there's no reason for the shield. Which is good, because the power needed to maintain that chain creates a very heavy drain. The Headmistress will not be teaching for a few days.”

“You know so much...” Maeve followed in his footsteps as he swept towards a long building that branched from the main Academy, built of the same stone but somehow designed to feel more open. Stepping through an archway, they were met with branching hallways, but Aerynar continued through a courtyard that held a fountain and lovely garden, and into a new hallway. He shot her a bemused look, then shrugged.

“My sister and I were all but raised here, only a decade old or so when the war ended. I was quickly picked up five years after our arrival by the Headmistress due to latent talents. I've been learning ever since, so... yes. I know quite a bit.” His smile was charming, and she gave him a shy grin in response as he held a door open for her. Inside, the room was airy and bright, the windows tall with shutters held open to let in the breeze. Beds lined the walls, each with it's own small table to it's left, and a chest at the foot of the bed. She saw students lounging on a few of them, though a quick look from the man she followed sent them scattering out the door.

At the end of the hall, a willowy girl with hair just a shade lighter than Aerynar's swayed with a basket in her hands, as if dancing to a tune only she could hear. Her braid was tight, though a few wisps of hair framed the sweetheart face, and bared the characteristic half-elven ears. Her gown was white, a silver sash wrapped three times around her slender hips. Her eyes, an odd shade of blue-green, seemed to light up upon spotting the taller male heading her way, and she smiled brightly, setting the basket aside to offer a hug. One Aerynar gladly took, kissing the top of the pale head before turning to Maeve.

“Saeressa, this is Maeve. Maeve, my sister.” Before the two could do much more than smile at each other, another woman bustled from a side room, her appearance – and the large pile of cleaned sheets that blocked her view – spurring the slight blonde to assist. “That would be my mother and,” he gestured to a taller figure still in the room behind the newcomer, “my father. I ended up the black sheep of the family, so to speak.”

The sudden flood of family twisted Maeve's stomach, reminding her briefly of her father, and then the grisly scene of her mother's murder. It was a feeling that dimmed as the mother approached, dusting her hands off before sweeping her son into a hug. “You are never around when I need you! You should tell that Headmistress to let you come home once in a while. Ah, and you must be the fresh meat I remember seeing those months ago. Good that you've filled out!” Propping her hands on her hips, the brunette cast a final glance up and down Maeve before nodding and looking back to her son.

“I'm afraid I haven't come for a quick chat.” Quickly, he went through the list of instructions that had been given to them, with the healer's face becoming paler and more drawn as time passed. When he finished, he held up a hand to stay her remaining curiosity, though there was the hint of a sad smile touching his lips. “The ley room is required for someone who, should she actually survive, you might wish to kill yourself. I'm sorry, Mother. It doesn't look good.”

Myruil could go no paler, finally glancing down and then nodding. “Of course. Well, she's not immortal. If a ley-room is needed, I'll get it sorted immediately. I assume I should be prepared to have guests?” She sighed at his nod, nodding to her daughter. “Saeressa, take our young friend here and get the beds in this ward ready. When you're finished, assist your brother and father in the trauma rooms. It's going to be a long night, I can already tell.”

Saeressa paused in her faint swaying, blinking as if she had been pulled from a daydream. As no one repeated the orders and she didn't ask for them to be said again, Maeve figured that the general behavior of the girl was normal and everyone had adapted. While the family split up, she followed Saeressa slowly, watching the girl change the bed linens before taking up a few sets of sheets for herself and attempting to make a bed.

It was an attempt that fell fairly flat, and she could not figure out why her sheets would not fit the bed, nor why the end result looked so very sloppy. After the first three beds, she wasn't surprised at all to see Saeressa watching her, a bemused smile on her lips. Embarrassed, Maeve fidgeted with the sheets for a few seconds more before coming up with the proper words to ask for help. Saeressa approached, taking Maeve's hands in her own.

“Lift, tuck, fold.” Guiding the girl to the other side, she repeated the brief tutorial, which Maeve realized would have absolutely no effect at all if she was not being guided at the same time. After a few more beds, the two parted and took up positions on opposite sides of the beds, making them with greater speed and ease. It was Saeressa who broke the silence, her voice calm and steady, almost matching the tempo of their hands as they worked. 

“Ley-rooms were built for those of our healers who require the magic of life to draw their magic from. Ley doesn't really have anything to do with the rooms themselves, since they're all pretty much nature-based. The only ones who really use them are the Topani visitors we get, and Petra. Mostly Petra. To encourage her learning. Not that she uses them, really. She fears them.” The odd eyes went outside, her brows furrowing. “Aerynar says you were to fetch her. You came right here, did you not?”

“Yes.” Maeve swept around the bed, standing on her toes to peer over Saeressa's head, and immediately frowned. Cresting the hill, the stumbling figure of Petra could be seen. Something was wrong, if not for the unsteady gait that the woman had, but for the simple fact that her body was warped, as if she could no longer control her body changing shape. As Petra's form fell to her knees again, Maeve excused herself and fled the building, searching out the proper doorway that would lead her to her friend. Once found, there was nothing that could stop her from reaching Petra, not even her own natural clumsiness.

Petra's eyes were haunted and pain-laced, her clawed hands reaching for Maeve as the girl approached, a tortured sob escaping as a whine. They collided, Maeve's arm wrapping around Petra's head to skate fingers through the muss of wine-dark curls that matted the russet pelt while Petra sobbed. “She won't stop screaming. She's alone, and afraid, and helpless... and she won't stop screaming.” 

Maeve's arms wrapped tighter around Petra as the woman's shape shifted again, leaving her holding a large brown-black wolf instead of the woman or her worgen shape. Already used to the shapechanger's extraordinary skills, the sudden change did not frighten her as much as the uncharacteristic sobbing that rang through her mind, the pleas for whatever she was tormented by to cease. Helpless, Maeve remained still, shooting a helpless glance to Aerynar and Saeressa, who watched her from the windows.


	11. Chapter Eleven

She no longer had any concept of time passing. Night and day seemed to mesh together into one long-running terrifying experience, and the most she could do to combat any of it was close her eyes tight and let the pain force her into blissful sleep. Her body ached, becoming worse with every moment she woke. Her mind never seemed to rest, racing a mile a minute and keying up all her senses as if she expected to be attacked any moment. She would have killed for just a moment of peace, one good dream among the countless nightmares she could feel but never remember. 

_You'll never escape... no one is coming._

Her eyes opened, then shut to close out the near-blinding sunlight that pierced through the overhead trees. Birds sang, a gentle breeze gusting over her body, bringing the smell of salt and the sound of crashing waves. Ignoring the feeling that she had been running before waking, she pushed herself up and stumbled through the trees, taking in a breath at the scene in front of her.

A pristine beach, sand almost too white and water too blue, stretched as far as she could see. All pain faded, and a grateful moan left her as she stumbled towards the water, collapsing where it met the shore and letting the frigid liquid bathe skin that felt as if it had been in the sun too long. Fear left her as the waves left the beach, the rhythmic sound lulling her body to relax and leave her swaying with the tide. Just a push could have sent her crashing to the sand. So weak. Hungry. These simple thoughts flooded her mind and only made her feel even more alone.

People belonged on this beach. She found herself closing her eyes and plucking memories to find the faces and voices that she wanted there with her, but opening her eyes left her just more aware that there was no one. Deep in her heart, she was beginning to believe there would never be anyone again. And that, she found, wasn't sounding so bad. There was no one to hurt her, no one to frighten her, no one to make anything worth it. She could fight it, but perhaps the goal wasn't to fight. Maybe it wasn't to win. She wasn't even certain she wanted to win, anymore.

“It's easy to give up. You've spent so much time fighting, you've forgotten how to rest.” The sand beside her shifted, bare feet seen before the speaker sat to rest a calloused hand on her shoulder. Wine-dark hair curled down over a gown of deep green, embroidered in gold and paneled with bronze and brown. The green eyes that watched her were opalescent and misty, reflecting none of the light of the scene around them. In fact, the woman seemed as though cast in shade and dark, completely different from the surroundings. “The moment you believe is the moment you lose. It isn't just you that you're fighting for.”

The hand slipped over her shoulder to her neck, clicking nails over the collar around her throat. Her eyes closed and she moaned as if in pain, the heavy feeling of having been running forever pushing back through limbs that had just begun to know peace. “If you believe, you'll never see them again. If you believe, even we can't save you.”

“Who are you?” She lifted a hand to grasp the other woman's, and she offered no resistance as the woman took the hand and turned it palm up, dragging the pads of her fingers over the skin. A design appeared and shimmered briefly, fading into existence until her fingers were curled over a small but dazzling green scale that shone like the woman's eyes.

“I would tell you, but you wouldn't remember. You wouldn't believe. There's so much you wouldn't believe, even if I had forever to explain it to you. Even so, what I have to tell isn't for you. There is another, and I will see her soon.” The unknown woman held her hand tight, until the scale became painful in her grip. “I can only give you this. Follow it. Trust it. Believe in it, just like you believe in this.” Nails tapped over the collar again, and her expression became sad. “You're going to fall so very far before the end.”

Confused, she opened her mouth to ask more, but the woman was gone as if she had never existed at all, simply blinking out like a light. Only the scale remained, and she turned it over in her hand, the sun glinting over the words etched on the back of the scale. _Believe Nothing._ Clasping it tight in her hand, she stood and faced out to the sea, not so much dreading the coming sunset as much as she was expecting it. 

A storm was brewing, making the calm waters break harder on the beach, a rising wind whipping her hair away from her face. The clouds came quickly, turning the sunny day into a blanket of fire as they caught the setting sun. In the distance, there was a sound not unlike a drumbeat, circles spreading out on the clouds as if someone tapped them and burst bubbles over the previously impeccable surface. It was a dazzling display, marred only by the sense of foreboding that pressed at her as the waters darkened and stilled, an eye of the storm that was completely calm before a shape rose from it.

It bore gray skin mottled by the sea, made slick by algae that clung to sagged flesh. Barnacles stuck to what wasn't glistening, each of them open despite the air, their insides wriggling like stationary maggots where they lay. The beast moved from the water, towering several feet over her. It bore no true neck, and no eyes or mouth that she could see. Instead, a curtain of thick, dark pink tentacles dropped from where a mouth might have been. The skin along the underside of it's jowls matched the tentacles, hanging in loose folds of skin down to it's chest. It bore the massive weight of it's body on four legs, the front two crashing down on either side of her as she stood staring, their clubbed ends sinking considerably into the sand.

It was the smell that was worse than anything. The scent of decay and brine, mixed with something else that pulled her back to long nights spent writhing beneath strange men and women, drugged and in pain. It was alluring and yet gag-worthy, and she hated it as much as she craved it. As the beast loomed and the tentacles dropped around her to trail streaks of slime along her skin, she fought the urge to retch. Running was no longer an option. She felt one thick appendage wrap around her waist to hold her in place, and another touch over her breast. The touch became firm, sliding like a slug over her skin. Suction pulled at her nipple, and despite her disgust, she moaned.

The creature seemed pleased, massive bulk shifting only slightly as more of the appendages dropped around her like a curtain and touched along her skin. Her flesh became dewy, and then moist, allowing the tentacles to slide easily over her skin and between her legs. It forced her to move, and she thrust a hand into the curtain only to have thinner tentacles wind around her fingers and wrists, cold and clammy and yet delicate enough to light her skin aflame as any lover could. It pulled her harder, her second hand becoming just as wrapped as it aided her into laying over one of the thickest of them.

It pressed the tip of the appendage she laid across against her folds like a tongue, coaxed by her groans to push deep within, not so much seeking to delve into her very depths as much as fold and wriggle inch after inch of itself within her. It never touched the barrier, never beat against her cervix as if it were a door. It simply slipped and squirmed, bringing hungry and needy moans from deep in her chest as her fingers dug into slimy pink flesh and felt firm ridges beneath, large enough for her to use as holds while her body worked against the creature, desperate for more.

She felt the slime become copious, nearly enough to drown her if she wasn't laying with her face down. The creature growled, and she felt bile rise at the scent of decay, but it washed away as another sensation hit her. Her head lifted, hair shielding her face from being hit by strands of spit as she focused on the new tentacle that had dropped against her back. It was not slick or ridged, but instead had a beaded look. The smallest were at the tip, thumping against the rise of her ass. Her hips rose, and after a brief struggle with the tentacles that held her hand, she found herself released. She caught the smallest bead between her fingers, drawing a groan from the beast as she felt it; slick and firm on the outside, but there was something within, something that felt like tiny nodules.

Without a thought, urged by something she could not name, she guided the thumb-sized bead to her ass, pressing it against the puckered skin until the creature took charge and forced the first past the firm ring there. The resulting clench and shiver brought mutual groans to both creature and partner, and she fell back onto the slime-covered tentacle that pulsed within her snatch as it began to feed more of the beads into her ass. They grew in size, finally ranging the size of her fist, and it was then that she began to moan in discomfort.

It was then that the creature did not stop. The beads that it fed into her were no longer growing in size, but were seemingly endless, and though it drew a climax from her that left her weak and yielding, she began to feel fear wind it's way through her mind. Her hands were once more restrained as the beast worked her ass and dripping cunt at the same time, feeding her orgasms that were swiftly becoming waves of nausea. There was a brilliant pain in her stomach, and then further up, and a creeping terror made her fight the beast as she felt something begin to crawl upwards towards her mouth. Something spherical, something being pushed with more behind it. Tears started then, weariness and fear becoming a poison all it's own as the beads began to force their way up her throat, and she released a scream that became a gag. The beads pushed through her mouth and met air, the previously pink skin a discolored red and black. The flesh wriggled, and the smallest bead, positioned just in front of her eyes as if to torment her with the reality of her predicament sucked flesh inwards to reveal the lethal spines.

The knowledge sunk in just as she felt the balls within her, lining her entire body from within, begin to tremble. A sobbing mewl, choked around one of the fleshy beads in her throat, escaped and turned into a gurgling death wail as the spines shot from their sacs, turning her body into a pincushion from every angle. She was lifted, suspended upside down by the deadly chain wound through her body, and her body retained just enough life to watch the collar fall from her destroyed neck to shatter upon the beach. Dark consumed her as the beast closed jaws around her.

Maeve started, nearly toppling from the chair she had fallen asleep in. The world had gone dark, night-time long fallen, and the airy medical ward was lit by only a few small lanterns. Unfolding herself from her chair, she touched at her stomach and then neck, the eerie feeling of something pressing and breaking her from within unsettling her. Content that she was alright, she chanced a glance to the bed she had fallen asleep beside, and saw that Petra still slumbered under the effects of the sedative elixir she had been given. The girl's brow was beaded with sweat, her breathing rapid, but she was no longer screaming in fear.

Quickly sponging down her friend's face, she placed a brief kiss upon the trembling brow and scooted away from the bed. Most slept quietly, the previously empty beds filled with those who had sustained very few injuries but still required aid. Maeve saw children curled against sleeping parents, and in one case, there was an old wolfhound at the foot of the bed of a young woman whose shallow breathing did not bode well. Saeressa slumbered awkwardly in a chair beside this woman, her basket held in her lap.

Maeve moved quietly past all of these, entering the corridor that held only three rooms at most. It was nearly empty, save for the crouched figure that hadn't moved since he had arrived and been unceremoniously barred from the room. Asithyl had made his displeasure known quickly, barely accepting food brought while he waited for the room to clear. As Maeve approached, his gaze went from the floor to her, and he offered the slightest of nods before looking back to the floor. Clearly, he'd been allowed in since.

She offered him a faint smile and slipped into the room, her eyes adjusting slowly to the gloom. There was only one piece of furniture in the room; a single altar large enough to hold even a great bull of a tauren comfortably. Atop it now was the barely limned form of Ashadel, her body draped only with a soft sheet. Her armor, well-loved as she knew it was, had been cut away and discarded. Her blades were safe outside the room; Asithyl had taken them and showed no sign of giving them up. In the dim light, only one thing reflected any at all – the simple collar around her neck that she never went anywhere without.

“She's resting.” The voice was quiet and lulling, barely a whisper or purr. It held no threat, but Maeve was startled nonetheless as the shadows moved and a small candle bloomed into life. “Perhaps for the first time since she arrived, she's resting. Even so, I can't promise that it is a good sign.” Elenie set a bowl on the altar, dipping a clean cloth into the water within. “How is your friend? The worgen girl. Petra, was it?”

“Yes. She's sleeping, I think.” Maeve watched the woman lift one of Ashadel's hands, trailing the damp cloth over skin that responded with goosebumps and shivers. “I’ve never seen her like that before.”

“I'm glad. It's been many years since I have had a need to create those elixirs, but I'm happy they still work.” Elenie paused, peering at the girl who seemed uncomfortable and yet curious. “She was like a mother to me, many years ago. I worked for an old organization, and Ashadel was a rogue agent working for both sides of the fence. I caught her one night, and in the resulting scuffle, I surprised her. She took me in, and taught me not only how to fight, but perhaps how to love.

“The Nightmare took everything I ever felt and twisted it. I've watched this very woman walk away with the man who held my heart for years, I've watched her kill me countless times, I've watched her even rape my child. I'm no innocent, but there was very little for the Nightmare to use against me. I battled for years against a darkness that was merely myself.” Elenie's hand brushed golden hair away from closed eyes, and her expression was sad.

“What does she fight, locked amidst her fears and triumphs? Does she see the son she culled before his birth? Who sleeps in her bed of spiders and rats? Who whispers sweet nothings into ears that yearn to hear? What part of her life was her worst, and how far does it crawl into that which was her best? She lived her life cloaked behind joy, but every day was another moment of hate for herself.” She lifted the sheet, gently bathing the unmoving woman.

“Petra said she was screaming. That she wouldn't stop screaming.” Maeve stepped forward, taking a second cloth offered by Elenie to help aid in cleaning the sleeping woman. “Do you... do you think that she'll be alright? I don't know her very well, perhaps I wish I knew her more, but there are so many people who seem to rely on her. She'll be okay, won't she?”

Elenie paused, her eyes catching Maeve's and holding them as she spoke. “No. I don't think she will be alright. I don't think she has ever known what it is like to be alright.” Her fingers touched over the pale burn that still lingered on the rogue's neck even after so many years of freedom. “When I met her, she was tormented by the joy of a friend. She had chosen another, a choice that tore her apart as much as it healed her, and now had to watch the man she had let go be happy.”

“I don't understand why that would make her unhappy. If he was happy, wouldn't that be all that mattered?”

“She believed that. In her life, it was always a game of putting everyone else ahead of her. The choice she made of who she wanted to be with? It was likely the first choice she had ever made on her own, without the threat of pain above I. She gave her heart to a military man, a man who knew nothing more than battle. What she needed was someone to be there, someone to love her... but she was left to love a shadow. Wouldn't you question your choice, if you saw that it did not exactly make you happy?

“That isn't to say she didn't love the man she chose. Can you imagine loving a man so much that you would wait forever for him to return? That you trusted his word that he would always come back? Meanwhile, you meet men and women who would give their arms and legs to have you, but you know better. You know they love the woman who fakes her happiness, that sleeps with anyone to just fill that gaping hole where there should be someone. She had to live with that. On top of her hell, on top of every choice, she had to endure feeling alone and knowing that she had only herself to blame for it.

“So she adopted waifs like me and the boy who would become my brother. She taught us how to fight, and how to live. To pass the legacy of her life onwards, though all she ever wanted after a certain point was a child of her own blood. Instead, everyone else was lucky enough to have that.” Elenie's smile was sad. “It's part of the reason that I took myself out of her life. This woman is not my mother in blood, but she is my mother in heart. I wanted her to find something that would make her happy. Every chick needs to fly the nest, after all.”

Elenie tipped her chin in the direction of the door, drawing the cloth along Ashadel's leg. “I know Marric has always loved her, no matter how much he would likely wish to beat her until there was some sense planted in her. There's a bond between the two there that can't come about without love and strife. I suppose letting him go was just another piece of the strife. You can tell that the man who stands outside the door now has feelings in some way, and I don't think they are those of someone who simply fights beside her. But it's the knight that was here earlier who is the one. He'll be the one to cause her fall.”

“What will happen, if she doesn't come out of it?” Maeve's lips pursed in a frown, a hand pressed to the dull sigil etched into Ashadel's shoulder. “Does she simply... die?”

“That would be a mercy. She can die. Some believe that, upon dying, their spirit goes to the Dream. If she's caught in the Nightmare, perhaps death would not be such a blessing. She could wake up, and if she fights everything she sees, she can even wake up completely sane. But the highest chance there is will leave her unable to tell reality from fantasy. She will go mad, and the madness will become like a plague that can be passed from one person to the next. I would rather have her asleep, I would rather have her die asleep, than have to be brought down by that knight with such haunted eyes.”

The silence stretched on, and Maeve finished and set aside her cloth without continuing the conversation. Elenie offered her a brief nod as she left the room, pausing to catch her breath just outside the door. Asithyl had fallen asleep, still crouched where he had been sitting upon her entrance, and she was considering getting him a blanket to ward off the chill of the hall when Xaedryx appeared and beckoned to her.

“I told you to join me in the Arcaenum when you were finished.” Her voice held a cool scold, enough that Maeve's eyes turned downwards and she muttered quiet apologies. “We'll discuss your punishment for not obeying me later. Right now, I need you present for a meeting. Your eyes might catch something that we would otherwise miss.” The elf moved off, and Maeve fell into step behind her, out the building and towards the large domed building that held the Arcaenum.

The door was closed when they arrived, but a simple motion from the elven teacher opened it, and they entered only to have the walls slam shut behind them. There were only two others in the room, both of which only barely familiar. The one was the slender figure of the Headmistress, her gown a shade of pale blue that complimented her pale skin and dark curls. Her hand was set lightly on the arm of one of the men who had come in through the portal earlier that day. His face was haggard and worn as he watched the glowing orb between them, and Maeve heard only the last few words of the conversation they were having before they appeared.

“... - don't need to do this.”

“If it will help, I will do it. If it's all that I can give, then I'll do it.”

Kas'viri gave the tall man a tender kiss on his arm before focusing on the two that approached down the stairs. She looked tired and strained, weariness tearing at the normally cool composure that she held like a cloak around her. She did not question the appearance of Maeve, a nearly dismissive glance cast towards the girl before she looked back to the man. 

“Marric, you remember Xaedryx from all those years ago. I brought her here to help decipher what may be lingering in your memories. The girl is another waif of Ashadel's, and Xaedryx's student... for the time being.” 

Maeve shuddered at the tone, a dark promise hidden deep in the words. Her eyes went back to the man, and found him watching her with a pained look. Uncomfortable, she looked back at the orb. Xaedryx's hand touched on her shoulder, but she had ceased listening as the three conversed among themselves, and only brought herself back to the world when Marric stepped up to the orb, and placed one hand upon it. His eyes closed, and she saw the trail of tears that had fallen silently just before the world bloomed into brilliant color.

It was strange, the filmy memories that he fed into the orb. Maeve spotted moments of peace; of a raven-haired Ashadel sleeping beside an wake Marric as his hand grazed over her temple in a lover's touch; of his anger and feeling of defeat as he stared down a blue-tressed kaldorei perched in a tree; of his fearlessness as he sprinted towards a fallen child as enormous spiders and scorpions advanced and wolves threw themselves in the way; of primal lust and need as he tangled upon skins and furs with the blue-haired huntress.

“This isn't what we need, Marric.” Kas'viri's voice was soft and hurting, the emotion clear in her voice.

“I know,” he replied. “But just let me remember for a moment. Take my joy, before you make me relive my pain.”

The words, bitter in their pain, silenced the Headmistress, and she turned tear-filled eyes towards the images once more. Maeve swallowed as he poured the memories in, wonder and awe tangled in sympathetic anguish. The birth of his son, the young girl he had rescued sleeping between he and the woman he no doubt loved, his pride as the little girl became a beautiful woman, his laughter as his son learned to hold a blade, and countless memories of time spent among friends and family – beautiful dancers and laughing magicians, all held tight and dear to his heart.

And then the good memories were but a moment of time spent with his family, holding his son close as his daughter and wife wept. The words they shared were muted, but the fear was there in all of them. It was the embrace of a family that knew it might be their last moment together, no matter how hard they fought... and then it was gone and replaced by bloodshed. Maeve gasped and stepped back into the reassuring arms of her mentor as a demon closed in on the red-head, his blade cleaving it in two. It was another angle of a fight she had seen countless times before, a fight that no doubt ran over and over in his mind with the clarity of it.

She saw the same people dying through his eyes as they had died through others, saw the same moment of sheer terror as the larger infantry of the Legion moved in on the quickly diminishing group. The air stirred around them as the portal opened again, nothing more than brilliant light in the man's peripheral vision, and his family closed together as more demons advanced. All but one. The child, the boy he had clung to so tightly the night before the battle was missing from the protective circle, and she wasn't the only one who noticed.

Ashadel, standing beside her friend to what looked like it might be the bitter end, had noted the fearful child run from the shelter of his parents, headed for a group making their way through the portal. The rogue caught up to him, grabbed him up despite his screams, and held him tight to her body as the crowd pushed in on them. Cut off from her friends, it seemed as though that would be the moment that their luck turned.

The girl was the first to fall, her spells cut short as a brutish hand ripped her from her family and dragged claws down her body, staining her dress crimson with her own blood and gore. The light from her eyes died long before she was dropped to be forgotten beneath the cloven hoof that crunched down on her broken body. The rage in the roar that the huntress released could not only be heard, but felt through them all as she lunged towards the demon. Hounds followed her, feral wolves that tore through skin and bone, dropping two demons before a third caught the wild woman on it's blade, piercing her through her back. Marric's eyes were wide, terror and mortification tangling with disbelief and hurt.

“No!” 

Maeve was not certain where the word came from. Marric's eyes were closed, but she had the sinking feeling that he'd seen this a thousand or more times. They watched him gather the woman into his arms, demons and hell forgotten completely. Others had come, shielding them, and it was in that moment that Xaedryx's nails drove into Maeve's shoulders, tearing a whimper from the smaller girl. An apology was muttered, but Maeve sensed that something had shaken her teacher, more than the scene before them. They watched in silence as Marric was buried beneath the corpses of the fallen, unwilling and unable to release the woman he loved.

When the dark cleared, the land was barren. Dust swirled over carcasses, but there were no living to be seen standing. Kas'viri laid a hand on Marric's arm, and he dropped his hand away from the orb and stood like a man stripped of everything that made a person human. It was Xaedryx who moved, sweeping past Maeve to set her hand on the orb. The images reversed, drawing a cry from Kas'viri that was silenced as Xaedryx held a single finger up. 

The images froze, and with a few swift motions, their sight moved from the bitter scene of Marric holding his dying wife to the background. A host of demons stood, and in the carnage that was happening, their presence was nothing to be shocked about. Maeve recognized the largest from the books that Xaedryx had given her for studies; cloven hooved and bat winged, the Nathrezim were the magical tacticians and lieutenants. 

“Xaedryx, they are but mere demons...”

Xaedryx shot a glance at the Headmistress, shaking her head. “There is no such thing as a _mere_ demon, Kas'viri. Even the smallest are a terror, but it's not the demons themselves I care about. It is this...” The images flared into life, and they watched in mute fascination as one of the great dreadlords turned and clawed through the body and armor of another. The first blow, dealt by a gray-tinged Nathrezim, became repeated against other demons until a line was carved through those that had stood behind. 

“I don't understand.”

“I don't think you would. Jaran had countless years of experience in killing demons, but I hardly think he got his hands on one of these. Not personally, not with their habits. Imps, infernals, sayaad? Yes...” Her fingers stroked over the Nathrezim carving through his brethren. “This is why they retreated. This is why the Legion pulled away. They may have taken in the Sha, but they could not control the effects of such power. It was a threat, and so they pulled back to recuperate.”

“You're telling me that they left because one decided to slap around another?”

“It's forbidden for one to slay another. For all their brutality, the Nathrezim hold several codes of conduct in their culture. One of the most paramount is that you do not slay those of your own. Such a grave breach has only been attempted once, and it's uncertain if it was a trick or if it failed, as the target appeared at a later time. We've been given a reprieve, Kas'viri. Nothing more. They will be returning the moment the Sha is culled from them, and I do not believe it will be long.” Her eyes flicked to Marric, and her head bowed. “Your pain has given us answers, Marric. It is a sorry balm for your wounds, but you may have given us the greatest warning we could possibly have.”

The man grunted, but said nothing. Kas'viri rubbed his arm, and spoke instead to the elven mentor. “I need Ashadel. I need all of them, as many as can be trained to fight as possible. If they come, we cannot stand as we are. We have no hope, no chance, _nothing_. I've held up this long, and I will not watch it all fall to pieces around me. I will not watch this world burn as well.” Kas'viri looked to Marric, and sighed. “I will take Ashadel to the Niquani. Your student will come with me.”

“Headmistress, she's -...”

“I've seen her, Xaedryx. She's able to hold a chain, and that is what is needed. I can continue her learning as we travel, and it is time for her to take her place where her mother would have been. I want someone to go to Devrolis Bay, see if we can't convince that bastard Goldleaf to lend his own aid. Someone to go back to Azeroth; I want to know where the hell those damned dragons were when we needed them most. And I need you here, Xaedryx. You and Eaxoa will be leaders and teachers, and I need every student here to be as ready as they possibly can be.

“Marric, rest. Take as long as you need, but I may send you to Azeroth. Most of those who are here were born here. They don't know the old world. I don't suppose you'd like to go on a dragon hunt?” She tried for a smile, and he returned a faint one before nodding. “Don't rush. Bartering with Goldleaf will take time, and I need to find someone who can do it.”

“I know two who could pull it off, depending on the type of man he is.” Marric's hand lifted to rub the back of his neck. “Both women. One tends to use her looks, the other is more... well, you remember Ellie, don't you?”

“Ashadel's little bloodthirsty daughter? Of course. Can hardly forget the one we could never allow to travel with the caravan.”

“Well, she came with me. Ended up having a kid, and the kid is pretty damned crafty. Could stand up to some of our rougher sorts all on her own. Give her a guide to get her where you need her to go, and I have no doubts that she'll get you what you need. Vanessa's a good girl, but she's a better shipwright than deal-maker. Easily distracted, too. Only downside is getting Katja away from her mother and father.” Marric shrugged. “If you don't have anyone yourself, I volunteer them.”

“Goldleaf doesn't like the vapid sorts. Good looks are fine, but not if that's all that there is to them. If your Katja is a clever girl, we'll send her. Houndstooth and her mate will go as guides. I wouldn't trust anyone else with keeping someone new to this world safe as they will. Well, anyone who is available at this time. I can say that it will be only Maeve and myself escorting Ashadel to the Niquani, but I know we'd have her Knight lurking. Which is probably better for all of us.”

She sighed, suddenly looking more tired than before. “This can wait until the morning. We all need rest. You, child,” she gestured to Maeve, “will be coming with me. Make certain you have a good set of riding clothes and a few extra outfits. We'll be traveling as lightly as possible. Marric, I think there is someone who deserves to see you after all this time. I'll take you to him.”

The woman moved off, Marric following behind after only a moment's pause. Maeve remained, watching Xaedryx, who continually rewound the images to watch the Nathrezim slaughter over and over again. Uncertain, Maeve turned to leave, a cold shiver slipping down her spine as silent words came unbidden to her mind.

_You are not to leave until you have received your punishment. Strip, and kneel at my feet._

Maeve did not need the rune of compulsion to follow the order.


	12. Chapter Twleve

“Do you really have to go?”

Maeve paused in her search, peering back at Tyler, who sat on her bed with her legs curled up under her chin. If there was ever a time that Tyler looked like a scolded puppy, it was now. The confession that Maeve had to leave had hit her friend harder than herself, tempering the excited nervousness that Maeve had with something akin to sadness. Though the two were hardly able to spend as much time together as they had previously, they had remained best friends, chatting long into the night until they passed out from exhaustion.

“Yes, I really have to go. Something about 'taking my place' is what she said, and I probably would have fought it if she hadn't all but told Xaedryx to can it.” Maeve folded a dress over her arm and went to sit beside her friend, a hand rubbing her back. “I won't be gone long, Ty. Just until Asha's all better, and then we'll be right back.” She didn't think it was a good idea to mention anything else that she had seen, if only to keep her friend from panicking more.

“What if she doesn't get better, May?” Tyler gave her another of those wounded puppy looks, and she realized that Ty and Asha had been even closer that she had with either of them. “The rumors and all that are really bad, you know? People died. A lot of people died. What if she's just another one of them, but it's taking her longer?”

Maeve's lips pursed. “Then, I guess we do our best, and we let her go when it's the right time. I know you were close to her, but you have to know that she's not immortal, and she likes to fight. From what I heard, she helped a lot of people before she went down. Isn't that the best way for anyone who cares about others to go out?” She tugged her friend closer, guiding her head to her shoulder. “I think that's how I would like to die.”

Tyler pushed away, hurt and anger tainting her for a moment as she looked at her friend. “Is that what Xaedryx has been teaching you? How to die? What about living, May? What about living for the people who like you, and want you? What about the ones that love you?” Tears brimmed in her eyes, and Maeve felt a cross between hurt and a laugh rising in her chest.

Unfortunately, it was the laugh that escaped her. “Ty, there's no one here who loves me. No one here wants me. I have friends, yes. I consider you and Brol'jzu and even David to be very good friends. I have lots of fun with Petra, too. She's like a sister, for Light's sake. But I've been here for months now, and aside from Xaedryx wanting to teach me, and the Headmistress wanting to take me on this mission with her? No one has shown any sign of _wanting_ me.”

“I want you to stay. Who's supposed to talk to me until we fall asleep? You'll be taking Plip, and it's not like she's all that great of company anyway.” She pointed to the glass bottle, turned on it's side and held in a wood stand that served as the Schlupp's sleeping place. Having been watching the conversation for some time, the little creature 'plipped' upon hearing it's name, languidly dripping from the neck of the bottle to gather puddle-like on the dresser beneath her bottle. “Sorry, Plip... but it's true.”

“Actually, I was going to ask you if you'd take care of her while I'm gone. From what I understand, the people we're going to see have Schlupps of their own, and they don't quite do well when mixed. Something about body contaminants, or something of the sort.” She stood and moved back to her bag, missing the pursed lips and narrowed brows of her friend as she went back to pulling one dress out and putting another in. “If you don't want to, I can ask Petra to keep an eye on her.”

“You really just... don't care, do you? You'll do anything that they tell you to do, regardless of how it makes anyone else around here feel. Some of the students say that you sleep in the bed of vipers that Xaedryx keeps for herself and -” Tyler's bitter words cut off at Maeve's sharp look, and shame touched on her cheeks.

“My relationship with my teacher is just that. What she has to teach me, I will listen to and learn from. That is the bond between a teacher and their student. You have no right to be telling me that I'm sleeping with a teacher, when I have no doubts that you and Ashadel slipped off that second day to have yourselves a little fun while I was just outside the room. 

“This entire school is full of people being taken to beds, stolen from beds, sleeping with teachers and students and – Light help me – even the beasts on the lands. So don't point your finger at me, one of a small handful of people not throwing themselves headlong into flesh, and dare to assume that I'm doing anything but learning.” Maeve shoved a dress into her bag as she finished, the restrained anger showing in the way she fairly punched it into the satchel.

While she hadn't been yelling, the damage was clearly done as Tyler paled and stepped back, the sudden wash of real anger that came from the diminutive quarter-human proving just how far over the line that she had gone. Tyler flinched as Maeve shut her bag and gathered up Plip and her bottle, and turned towards her.

“I'll ask Petra. Thanks for everything, Tyler. I'll see you when I get back.” Warmth no longer existed in her tone, and she swept out of the room with Plip on her shoulder, waving sadly back to the wounded Tyler, who waved dumbly in return before dropping to her knees beside her bed, pulling out a plainly wrapped package. Hugging it tightly to her chest, she wept.

Maeve's anger had cooled considerably by the time she set foot in the infirmary, but it hadn't cooled so far as to become regret for lashing out at her friend. Petra and Saeressa were happily conversing when she entered, and her mood soured further when her request for Petra to care for her pet was denied.

“I can't, Maeve. I'm sorry. I'll be heading out to do some things for the Headmistress while she's gone. With Neyila leaving soon, I'll be the gameskeeper, and that means that I'll have to go to a lot of places and I won't be able to keep an eye on Plip. For the exact reasons that you can't bring her with you.” The named creature danced up along Petra's bedsheets, grasping a long bunch of wine-dark hair. Petra lifted the strands, and Plip gurgled in delight as she swung. “Why don't you ask Tyler? I'm sure she would be happy to look after her until you get back.”

“We're... having a fight.” Maeve shifted uncomfortably, missing the glance shot between Petra and Saeressa. The healer took that moment to excuse herself, skirting a few newcomers who had decided to test their feet to go to the bed of Marric, who reclined and watched the clouds pass outside the window. “She told me that there were rumors that I was sleeping with Xaedryx, and I sort of... snapped at her. Pointed out that I knew she was pretty guilty of that herself.”

Petra smirked. “I'm guessing you've spent more time with Xaedryx having you explore yourself than anything else?” Her smirk became a grin as Maeve nodded. “Anyone who actually knows Xaedryx knows that she's not the type. She's old, really. Far as we all know, she's sterile, too. So she doesn't have the same urges, and she's not really the type to want physical nearness. I asked her about it once, and she told me that she has a condition that makes sleeping with her a real pain. That isn't to say she's never slept with anyone...”

“She said she was married once. There was another man, too. A human. She didn't talk much about it, but it was pretty obvious that she misses both of them.” Maeve sat herself on the end of Petra's bed. “I just... I felt angry because I had to point out that I didn't feel as though anyone wanted me, and then she accused me of sleeping with my teacher. I didn't come here for sex... I want to learn.”

Petra shrugged, poking a finger at Plip as she swung. The finger pushed through the Schlupp's body, and Plip recovered instantly by swarming down along Petra's hand to curl about her wrist like a gooey bracelet. “Not everyone is here for the sex. I'm certainly not. I'm pretty certain the Headmistress hasn't ever taken a man to her bed in all the time I've known her, but she's pretty intimidating. Ever think that maybe Ty is trying to tell you how she feels, without actually saying it?”

“That's annoying.” Maeve's cheeks flushed at the thought. “If she wanted to say it, she should know that I'd listen. But even then, I couldn't... I couldn't do anything with her. I'm not that kind of girl. I like her as a friend, but I couldn't actually... you know.”

Petra gained a surprisingly wolf-like grin. “I think we're all afraid to try something new. I'm not going to tell you to go sleep with Ty. I just think that, maybe, you should talk to her and get this cleared up before you leave. Things change, and the worst thing of all would be for there to be any anger or bitterness. You don't know when you're coming back, after all. Could be weeks. Could be months. Might even be years.” She shrugged.

Maeve knew her friend was right, but it didn't make her feel any better. Maybe she didn't like Tyler in the manner that the girl seemed to like her, but it wasn't right to leave her like this. With a groan, and a complaint along the lines of hating that her friend was right, Maeve made her way to stand, gathering Plip back up and pouring her into the jar that was her resting place. “Fiiiine. Petra? You be safe, okay? Write me, if that's even possible.”

The shapeshifter smiled, snuggling down into her bed as Saeressa brought her a bottle on a wooden tray. “I'll do my best, Maeve. I promise. Go get things settled. The Headmistress is not a woman who enjoys waiting.”

By the time Maeve made it back to her room, Tyler was gone. Pursing her lips, she closed the door again and stared at the wood for a few moments, then turned on a heel and walked further down the corridor to where Brol'jzu and David shared a room. She didn't bother knocking, but the sweet smoke that spilled from the room made her back up a step. Plip reached from her bottle, lips forming a proboscis that sucked up a good deal of the smoke, until her little stomach was distended and she looked like a small bottle with arms and legs. 

“Brol?” Maeve gathered her content pet up in a palm, the little goo-girl fairly melting over the flesh as her own translucent skin shimmered and glistened. Plip sprawled on her back, stomach flattening slowly as she expelled little circles of smoke – a trick she had picked up from the troll not long after being brought to the castle. Her legs kicked between Maeve's fingers, the potent drugs taking quick effect. “Brol, are you in there? That can't be good for you.” 

Maeve's cheeks darkened as the troll appeared, dark skin beaded with sweat and well defined beneath the gauze of smoke. Hard, too. There wasn't a bit of softness to him, not since he had taken such a liking to the combat classes. It wasn't the first time that she had seen him nude, but those had been quick glances in the bath before she scurried somewhere private. In this moment, she was keenly aware that he was all but displaying himself, leaning against the arch of the door.

“I...” Words had fled her mind, and she had quite a moment of utter blankness before they snapped back to her, and her eyes dragged away from his very rigid maleness to his face, where she pouted while he grinned at her. “I had a favor to ask, but I didn't expect you to be busy.”

“Nah. No' buseh, no' yet. Waitin' fer chu, girleh.” His hand came out to grasp around her wrist, and Plip took her chance to roll like a sticky ball down Maeve's palm to Brol'jzu's arm, where she squished her way to one of his braids. “Almos' seemed like chu migh' jus' leave without sayin' any sort of good bye, ya? Bad luck, that. Have sum tings ta give ya, fers. Gonna 'ave ta breathe sometime, girleh.” He pulled her to him, his easy strength overriding her stubborn backpedal. The door shut behind her, and she skid into his arms with no effort.

“Let me be seein' ya a moment, ya? Trust me a li'l.” He brushed copper blonde curls back from her face, his thumb tracing along her jaw. “'Chu trus' me, ya? Ol' Bol'jzu nevah given ya a reason no' ta trust. Nevah hurt no little girl.” Gathering the bottle and stand from her hands, he set it on the barely discernible dresser against one wall, settling Plip – still making smoke rings to her little heart's content – on the lip of the jar. There was a 'plop' as the Schlupp tipped drunkenly back, and fell to puddle at the bottom of the jar.

“Not gonna let chu go runnin' off nao, Mah.” His hands went to her belt when he approached, deft fingers quickly loosening then removing it, bringing it up to dangle in front of her face. “Chu run, ah bind. Don' chu try tah work any o' dat rune-magic, eithah. I'ze pretteh good about keepin' ya quiet, an' I don' realleh wanna do dat. Chu been 'urt bad, but not 'ere. Not now.” 

Her mouth opened, and he pressed his thumb to her lips and shook his head. The beads in his hair were the only sound as his hands roamed to the ties of her tunic-top, unlacing it and letting it fall around her hips. Her bare skin was cool, clammy with fear and trepidation, and she lifted her hands to cover her bare breasts, only to let them fall again as his head shook. Her eyes closed instead, hands curling into fists at her sides as she stood rigid while his own traced the lines of her chest, slipping beneath each breast, his thumbs trailing around the skin that was only a hair away from her areolae. 

The puckered skin ached, and she let spill a soft mewl that was partly uncertainty, and the rest just miserable need. The need for him to touch, to hold, to feel. Yet, Brol'jzu simply skimmed her body, crouching to undo the tie that kept her skirt above the ample hips she had gained with being well-fed and happy. The cloth spilled at her feet, and he escorted her from it and let her stand, her breathing shallow, while he merely observed.

“Not a troll, Mah, but chu a treat fer anyone who look at chu. Now, dis? Dis gon' hurt jus' a li'l bit, ya? Good 'urt, ah promise. Jus' like when chu feel dat flat hand o' yer teachah's, ya? Jus' a leetle bite.” His voice was accompanied by the clicking of chains, and then a brief fire of pain that dulled to an ache as he set twin clamps on each of her nipples. Her eyes opened, spotting the delicate bronze chain that now hung between her breasts, a teardrop shaped weight making every move bring forth just a little more of that fire-laced ache.

He pulled the weight, and she moved with a moan of pain-laced joy toward him. When his legs hit his bed and he was forced to sit or topple, he dropped onto his bed and pulled her into his lap, her back against his chest. Her legs were thrown over his own, and she reclined against him as if he were a mere throne. She felt safe, and comfortable, his hands resting loosely on her hips, nothing bound. She changed only one thing, lifting her hips to let his cock lower between her legs, the large shaft made almost extraordinarily so when compared to her smaller body.

Tempted, she tucked her knees inwards, clasping that stiff rod of flesh between her thighs and against her labia. His grunt as her hips wriggled made her grin, and she continued the slow tease despite his grip upon her hips. She was only dimly aware of Tyler watching, only fully focusing as her friend spoke in a tone that seemed as curious as it was wounded.

“Nice, isn't it? Just sort of letting the smoke dull your inhibitions until you're okay with anything that happens to you. Anyone can just come up and do what they like. Seems silly that he had to drag you in here, doesn't it? The whole world seems a little silly, which is good.” Tyler padded close, feet bare on the stone floor. Her hand flicked out, catching the weight and pulling it until Maeve's back bowed and she whimpered.

“Why won't you love me, Maeve? I've been a good friend, haven't I? Given you space, listened to you when you've been frustrated, laughed when is necessary... but you don't love me. You don't love me like I love you.” She released the weight, tearing a whimpering groan from the girl. “But I think I found out what it is. I'm just a friend to you, because you aren't the type to like women. All this time, I've been wasting myself on you...”

The bitter tone melted as she leaned closer, tipping Maeve's chin up. “Look at you, dancing like a little slut on Brol's lap. It takes a man to grind your gears, but I was so set in getting you to accept me like this. Practically lived my whole life like it, so why not see if the lonely but attractive mixed-breed would be interested in a lowly human?” Her thumb ran over Maeve's lips, free hand tapping the weight to have it swing freely, keeping Maeve's moans low and frequent, almost perfectly timed with her grinding.

“The most I can do is make you see the truth before you go. I can't keep you, but I can make sure that you know what wants you.” Tyler stepped back, stripping slowly out of the robes she wore, until she stood in nothing more than her bra and underwear. The bra came off, tossed aside to land heavily and settle out of sight. Her flat chest did not surprise Maeve, but the definition did. Small, slight, feminine from a distance but male. Especially when coupled with the underwear that were more like tight shorts, outlining the bulge straining against the restrictive fabric.

“I'm not a woman, Maeve. Never been one, but I looked enough like one with the long hair that my demented parents decided I’d make a better girl. I got used to it, and you'd be surprised how appealing it is. You get to wear such soft things without being judged, it gives you a whole new idea of... existence.” Tyler, now registering as male in Maeve's drug clouded mind, stepped forward and grasped one of her hands to press it to his groin. “Not impressive, I know.”

Tyler's grin turned devilish, and he sat beside Brol, leaning over to speak into Maeve's ear in the most male voice she'd ever heard from the otherwise feminine figure. “You talk in your sleep, Maeve. I already knew I’d need help to really please you like you needed,” his lips dragged lightly over her hot shoulder, and she mewled, “because I could never be the man that you claim your father was in your dreams.” Her flush brought him considerable satisfaction, as did her little sob. “You were a Daddy's Girl of the highest variety. Used, toyed with... but a part of you loved it.”

Her movements slowed, the sound of wet stroking ceasing as she panted in place, finally shaking her head. “No?” Tyler reached a hand down, his fingers curling around Brol's shaft while his thumb idly flicked Maeve's clit. Every sharp touch made shudders wrack her body, and she fought to tuck her legs up against her chest to defend herself. “You really shouldn't lie to your friends, Maeve. We are your friends, aren't we?” The girl nodded slowly, twisting her hips to try to dislodge Tyler's thumb, and was rewarded with a tangled cry as he pressed hard on the little nub. “Then admit it.”

“N-n-nooo!” She thrashed as an unexpected orgasm hit her, leaving her as putty-like as Plip in Brol's arms. 

“Felt good, didn't it? Nice when it's not you doing it. But you see, I promised Brol something. Promised he'd get to see that little body writhe.” Once more he leaned closer, dragging his lips over her ear, “Just like Daddy Dearest promised that neighbor of yours he'd get to have his turn. You had them both, and Daddy got to keep the house. You were just coin, and you loved it. You fucked yourself silly on that memory. Admit it.”

“C-can't... please, stop. Please...” 

Tyler shook his head, sweeping back copper-blonde curls from her forehead. “Can't, baby girl. Been in the same room with you for months, and I know what you dream of. You miss your Daddy, but he was never worth a moment of your time. Never worth your love. But you always miss him, don't you? You can't help it. He still holds power over you, and you're blocking everyone out because of it.”

Maeve sobbed, her legs fighting him again as he flanked her labia with his fingers. “That's not true!”

“No? You just quivered and came from nothing. I'm betting that, for all the moments he used you, you never experienced bliss. It was never about you. He was selfish. How can you love a selfish man, Maeve?” His tone was different than his touch, sweet and kind as he thumbed her clit until she was panting and mewling. “Why do you waste your time on someone like that? On an echo? A memory?”

“He... He's my Daddy,” she whimpered at last, and it was as if a dam had broken as she let the tears fall free, her head falling back against Brol'zju's chest with her eyes closed. “You don't just abandon your family because of something they do. No matter how horrible.” She choked on the last words, the image of her mother torn to pieces playing fast and furious through her mind. “No matter how...”

Brol'zju stood suddenly, turning and pressing Maeve down to the bed, his hands gripping her hips to pull them up while he leaned over her, whispering into her ear. Tyler could not hear what was said, but he recognized the battle well enough. Flopping down on his stomach on the bed, he smirked and nudged Maeve with his elbow as Brol gathered Maeve's hair in his hands and pulled back, tilting her head.

“I know how wicked that man was. Why don't you be a good girl and just... listen to Brol'zju? It's not so hard. Just let your lips part, and let the words slip out...” Tyler grinned as Brol pushed her, forcing a whimper from her as the chain tugged on sheets. “Time's a tickin', May. We'll keep you here all night, you'll miss the Headmistress and she'll be -”

“Fuck me!” Her hand lifted to catch one of Brol's own, and he grinned as he moved the hand that had been teasing her away, and pressed the tip of his cock to her folds instead. But he stayed there, watching her groan and writhe, and finally whimper in frustration. “Please? Please! Just... I can't be late!”

“Say it, girleh.”

Maeve groaned, shoving her face in the blankets, her hands gripping fabric before she finally lifted her head and expelled the words quickly and all in one breath. “Please fuck me, Daddy.”

He entered, hard. Maeve's cry was muffled in the blankets, and when Brol did not ease up from his rough fucking, the cry became waves of tears. Yet, as Tyler observed his friend in quiet enjoyment, he saw the pain melting away. Perhaps not the physical pain – Brol'zju was considerably larger than any human male, and certainly large compared to Maeve's smaller frame – but the emotional anger. Tyler was sure he saw a smile and a look of bliss take on her face, even with Brol's grip upon her hair and hip, he was sure he heard the ecstatic sound of triumph from her lips just before the rising moan and near-scream of her orgasm, muffled only slightly by Brol's primal groan.

He let Brol hold her until they calmed, then tapped the troll's shoulder. With a grunt, the much larger male moved off of their mutual friend, who struggled to move herself. Smiling, Tyler curled a hand beneath her and pulled her upright, holding her close as he unclasped the chain and tossed it aside, guiding her to sit on a stool while he took a cool cloth and swiftly wiped the sweat from her body. 

She began to pay more attention as he dressed her; guiding her quietly into bra and panties of a pretty bronze fabric, sliding cream-colored stockings up her legs to clasp to the garters. Soft leather leggings of that same cream shade hugged tight to her curves, the boots laced up over her shins a pretty brown. Coaxing her to stand, he helped her into an equally soft tunic of cream and bronze, with loose sleeves.

“These aren't mine,” she murmured.

“Sure they are.” Tyler gestured to Brol'zju, who sprawled over his bed puffing rings of smoke into the air, and reached to pluck up a small box. “He made the outfit himself. This is from me, though.” He held up the thin necklace of bronze that held only a single decoration; an artfully woven rune of protection made only of bronze filigree. “For luck.” When she remained unresisting, he clasped the necklace about her throat, and smiled. “Suits you.”

“What for? All of this.”

“Was meant for your birthday, but when we learned you were leaving...” Tyler shrugged. “Consider them all early gifts. Oh, and this.” He pulled a book off of a nearby shelf, and handed it over. “I know you like the history classes, so I picked up a history book at the shop in Stone. Figure you can read it if there's a quiet moment...”

Maeve looked at everything she had been given, and found herself offering a sheepish grin. “Even the...”

“Yeah. Even that. Maybe now, you'll have someone else keeping you warm in your dreams, instead of the bastard you left behind.” Tyler shrugged. “And uh... while it's not exactly a secret, maybe it's best you don't go around shouting that I'm not as female as people think. I like the silk and lace things.”

She couldn't help it. Nearly dropping her book, she swept forward and gathered Tyler into a tight hug, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “You're both the best friends a girl could ever hope to have. I won't ever forget this. Not ever, in a thousand lifetimes.”

“Jus' come back, ya?” Brol'zju rumbled from the bed, holding up a hand. “Donchu be worryin' 'bout dat Plip. We take good care, no worries. Live a little, ya? Jus' come back.”

“I'll come back. I promise.”

The sun was high in the sky when Kas'viri at last felt satisfied that everything was to her specifications. There were two carriages, one of which had been completely stripped to serve as the transport for Ashadel, and warded to be as much protection for the unconscious woman as it was for the two who would be escorting her. From the outside, it seemed as though there were no windows and no doors, but one had only to touch the rune-lock and enter to see that the side walls were little more than glass. In the middle of the inside, a cot-like bed had been made, and Ashadel had been moved gently to it. Benches flanking her, set against the walls, would serve as a resting place for the third that she assumed would join them as randomly as he was prone to doing.

The first carriage had not been cleaned out, and it was a plush way to travel. They would ride in comfort upon luxurious couches, even a small table set between them to support food or learning. Their belongings would be stowed beneath the cushions in deep compartments, their food stored in much the same way. Each carriage was drawn by two draft horses of utter black, each beast towering easily over the half-elf though they acted like affectionate children towards her as she made last minute adjustments.

All that remained to be dealt with was the child, who Kas'viri spotted easily once the girl left the main buildings to head towards her. Her cursory examination was brief; the child seemed happy and stable, dressed well without being overly flashy, and from the healthy glow on her cheeks, had participated recently in sexual relations that would keep her mind clear. 

“Since you are capable of following an order, I will assume that you are the type to only need to be told a rule once to understand it.” Her eyes narrowed, and the girl's smile faltered slightly as she nodded. “Good. I am not your friend. Xaedryx has spoken quite highly of you, and so I must advance your learning so she is free to do as she must in this time of change. You will continue to refer to me as Mistress, or Headmistress. The only exception to this rule is if our hosts instruct you differently – on this world, we defer to the greater wisdoms and cultures, especially when we go to them in need of aid.

“You will be introduced as my handmaiden as well as my student. Among this race, that is a concept that is not common. They do own slaves, and the slaves are rarely given leave to learn the advanced magicks that you will be learning under me. Clear so far?” At Maeve's nod, she continued, gesturing to the second carriage. “Ashadel lies within. The transport is warded with a rune that I will teach you. You are not to step two paces from that cart without activating the wards again.

“I will assume that you are aware of what has inflicted Ashadel? Good. This rule is the most implicit of all. When I tell you to do something, you do it. I will very rarely ask a question or a favor of you. You must trust that when I tell you to do something, I am doing it for your protection. The woman in that cart is extremely fragile at this moment. At any time, she could snap out of the sleep she has been put under, tear the carriage apart, and rip us limb from limb in utter madness. She would enjoy every moment of it before slowly corrupting the rest of the world.

“If I tell you to restrain her, do so. If I tell you to run from her, you will. If I tell you to kill her, you will do that as well. If we are attacked by the man that she calls her Master? You will kill him as well, should it be possible. As it is, he will likely appear and vanish as he wills during the journey. If he does appear, you will treat him with as much respect as you would treat anyone else. You will refer to him as Sir or Master Kaer-Orasi, and if he tells you to kneel and lick his boot, you will do so if only for the point that any command of his is one of mine. Understand?”

The girl nodded quickly, adjusting her bag and book while shifting her weight from one foot to the next. Looking her over once more, Kas'viri tapped the carriage door and it opened. “Settle your things. There is parchment and ink beneath your seat. Take it out, and begin your exercises. When I have an accurate assessment of your remedial skills, I can begin teaching you how to chain when we stop to let the horses graze.” Maeve uttered her acknowledgments and vanished into the dark interior, leaving Kas'viri to observe the grounds for a moment before she also entered the carriage, shutting the door behind her.

The horses moved unbidden, the gems that decorated the bridle each one wore glowing dimly as they moved off down the road. Above them, dragons and griffons danced in the air, their riders watching the twin carriages leave the grounds and travel past the town of Stone, and they continued watching until nothing could be seen of them any longer.

_Part One: End_


End file.
